I've been playing The Arcana, which is a mobile game. It's beautifully drawn and has pretty music and a neat story. It's a romance / VN with several unique routes and a story wound up with some neat Tarot mythos. You can pick your gender and pronouns. It's real good. I have been enjoying it enough that I looked up the dev and downloaded their other game also.
I have spent too much money on extra scenes. >.>
Faraday is a class act and a half, and she won't even take money for the work she does for this hobby even when people are trying to throw it at her.
Yeah I don't care that much about what Kardashians do or don't do but if it contributes towards helping with innocent people incarcerated I'm down for whatever.
I mean, I'm not canceling Joss because he cheated on his wife, but I'm pretty done with Joss because of sexist bullshit he did in the Avengers.
There are some jurisdictionally dependent resources. Washingtonlawhelp.com is pretty good for pro ses in my state, particularly if they need family law.
@nyctophiliac said in The Art of Lawyering:
Such interesting answers!
Now I'm curious about other things because my mind wanders!
Do lawyers have stereotypes of other kinds of lawyers?
Definitely. Lots. I mean, there are stereotypes that we have just in public defense about public defenders - the jaded workhorse versus the one who drank the koolaid - so I'm sure there's others out there.
Are all lawyers pessimistic?
No. My first boss was incredibly optimistic. Unfortunately, he frequently shared his rosy view of the world with the clients, and this included a rosy view of what their payouts were likely to be. I received many crash courses in what not to do during the course of that job.
I do think most lawyers are cynics. Even the idealistic ones.
Also a surprising number of us that I have met have adult ADHD in some form.
Are you all amazing in social situations because of your jobs? Or do you think that it's a prerequisite?
Fuck no. Lol. I'm deeply socially awkward, but have learned to mask well. I've seen some other lawyers who were basically social train wrecks. Nothing about law school or lawyering teaches you to interact with other human beings, including other lawyers.
Is there a lawyer joke you just should absolutely not ever make under any circumstances?
If you're bugged by lawyer jokes you're in the wrong job.
I have a joke I use in voir dire:
"There are only three lawyer jokes ... the rest are all true stories."
I suspect the prosecutors are as sick of hearing me tell that joke as I am of hearing their canned thing about reasonable doubt, but whatever.
I like to write roster characters for a number of reasons, but one of the things that brings me the greatest joy is when stuff I wrote grows and builds. It feels like an act of collaboration. Many eons ago, I wrote a couple of characters with a strong relationship as part of a "set". I don't always write "sets" of characters for the roster because honestly it tends to make them harder "sells" -- just because people like characters where they can define things for themselves, and having strong relationships with other roster characters places a player in a position where they're hoping for a win in the roster "lottery".
Anyway, this post is about a couple of players who picked up a couple of characters I wrote, who have played them beautifully for like IDK years, and today there was a birth announcement on Arx where one of them named her child after the other one in a slightly punny way, and I'm just really happy about it, OK.
iluguys. Thank you for breathing dynamic life into stuff I made up a million years ago and making it your own.
@Ganymede I did Barbri. I think the thing that made it grueling for me was how much time I spent doing it and how intensely I did it. My memory of that period is basically just a fugue of practice, practice, wrist pain, practice, but I was absolutely terrified of not passing the bar the first time and having to do it again.
Although the actual bar exam I found not particularly hard, except for the one question that had issues in it that weren't in any of Barbri's outline, wherein I was remembering stuff from a 2L course in employment law I JUST HAPPENED to take. There were a lot of pissed off test-takers in the hallway afterwards about that.
@Roz Yeah it was the worst and most grueling part of the whole thing. Bar prep was brutal. Never worked harder before or since.
@Rinel Admittedly I sometimes have to chant this to myself after they scream at / hang up on me.
@Rinel Well, if they could afford the bail, they'd clearly be a flight risk...
@nyctophiliac said in The Art of Lawyering:
Jury System. Just why would anyone ever want to be tried by a court of their peers when the majority of our peers aren't all that smart - why not rely on a professional with experience? (Like a Judge!) Does this happen anywhere other than America? What do yall lawyers think about this?
I actually quite like juries. I've found them to be remarkably incisive in unexpected ways when I've spoken to them after court. They frequently come to a "right" conclusion --anecdata only, mind. The last couple of trials I've had, the jury came back with a decision that was basically... what the State offered me in settlement negotiations.
I think that the truth is often best reached by sifting down between opposing viewpoints. In my experience of most witness testimony, what actually happened is often... somewhere betwixt and between.
The Gavel. Talk to me about this. ORDER ORDER! BLAM BLAM! Is it just to punctuate that you mean business? What do yall lawyers think about this?
I've never actually seen one used in court.
Why did you choose the section of law (family, criminal, etc) that you chose? Or did it choose you?
inertia. I took the first job I could get in a terrible economy, and then continued to build my career from there. I do think I'm pretty okay at it, though.
Why on earth did you choose to practice law to begin with? Was it the money or..?
I had no idea what I wanted to do in real life and law school was a way to put off dealing with that for a few more years. My degree was in secondary education English literature and I didn't actually really want to be a teacher. Who knew?
What is the most hilarious case you've worked on?
Most of my shit isn't very funny. We did have an assault 4 once where the defendant allegedly threw a plum at his girlfriend while they were driving. I insistently referred to it as the drive-by fruiting case and made the PA laugh more than the joke was worth. We are the Mrs. Doubtfire generation, I guess.
What is the saddest case you've worked on?
A lot of 'em, really. I represent parents who are trying (and often failing) to not lose their children to the State. The worst is when they really genuinely want to try to fix their problems but their mental health is just too jacked up ... or when they are genuinely improved, but their relationship with the child is just plain unsalvageable.
I've lasted longer in my contract than most do. Turnover is high. Emotions are terrible. But somebody's got to do it.
Criminal Justice Lawyer Types: What's the scariest person you've represented?
I'd prefer not to say.
Would you ever represent someone that is guilty but they wanted you to get them off the hook? Would you lie for them? What's the furthest you'd go?
Guilty is a legal determination. They aren't guilty until they're convicted. I can and have represented people post-conviction, though. But ... I think the very question of whether you'd rep a guilty person misconstrues the point. My job is twofold: (1) to make sure the authority does their damn job correctly; they don't get a conviction no matter what my client did if they fuck up; and (2) to minimize the damage to my client's life that results from whatever dumbass thing they did to get them into that situation. Is it what they're charged with? Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is, no matter what someone has done, they're not beyond human caring.
Any given citizen is vastly outweighed by the power of the State. It's vitally important that no individual be crushed under the weight of that authority and power without checks and balances. The individual case is almost not the point. My role is vital, even though there are individual cases where there is literally fuck all I can do besides go "Your Honor, the burden of proof is on the State."
I don't lie. My professional ethics are extremely important to me, and so is my professional reputation, and I definitely would not compromise either for a client.
Do you like arguing? How can you manage to keep your shit together when impassioned?
I find that, when I am prepared, passion enables me to keep my shit together versus the forces of anxiety that otherwise undercut me.
I don't really like arguing, because I don't really like conflict. I dunno. I definitely didn't decide to be a lawyer because I was like, yay, arguing. But, somehow, here I am.
Noodles and cottage cheese. As I eat this for lunch I think it is probably depression food.
@Three-Eyed-Crow your rp isn't boring! 
unproductive tho.
I wish I had the juice for another game right now. 
Sometimes I make a quesadilla which is just cheese in a tortilla with Tabasco sauce but I don't think of it as depression food because I have to be arsed to get out a pan and maybe some butter.
Also I just got a corn dog from the drive thru which probably qualifies....
@Derp I'm not dissing it. It's just not relevant to those particular needs.
@surreality I love that meat hammer. I bought a pizza cutter in the shape of the starship Enterprise once. (NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C or D)
I use it for all my dough cutting!