Sam Pickett ‘21
Columns Editor
Summer 2020: The Humanization of Big Law
From the time that you start law school, people tell you all kinds of things about your 2L summer. They talk of luxurious lunches with BigLaw associates; they tell you of weeks of traveling after your program is over; they regale you with tales of work barely done, the adventures to be had, and they remark that all this can be yours, if you simply go through the wringer that is OGI.
Well, I went through the wringer that is OGI. And while I had imagined a summer ~frolicking~ through D.C., life had other plans. So, on July 6, 2020, forty-nine days after I was originally supposed to begin my program, I sat down in my Ivy Garden apartment, alone, and logged onto the firm’s server. And there I sat for the next six weeks. To best summarize my experience, I have decided to come up with a list of the positives and negatives of having a ~virtual summer~.
Positive: Partners are human, just like us!
During OGI, you come to fear partners. They are painted as severe people in suits who don’t make mistakes and who frown strongly at a misplaced comma in a resume. They are not people; they are lawyers who only think and talk about the law.
But it is simply not possible to think of them that way when they are video chatting from a random room in their home, shooing their children—each of which is in various degrees of undress—out of the room from the edge of their screen. Perhaps I would have gotten to know the partners through bougie lunches in downtown D.C., but probably not as well as I know them now.
Negative: We did virtual trivia.
I am actually a big fan of trivia—not because I am good at it or because I know a lot of things, but because there may be one basketball-related question that I can answer and feel important. This trivia, however, was run by a teenager (or a man who looked like a teenager) with an iPad, and this teenager did not know how to work Zoom at all. Also, there were no basketball-related questions.
Positive: We did a virtual cocktail night and now I can make a mean daiquiri.
In what was a predictably rousing success, the law firm shipped us various alcoholic materials and had someone teach us how to make cocktails. Now I can make a daiquiri, which people[1] really like.
Negative: We did a virtual paint night and I disproved the notion that everyone can paint if they try.
While the teacher kept reiterating that you “cannot mess this painting up” because “everyone can make it look how they want,” I did in fact mess it up. No, I will not elaborate.
Positive: I really do want to be a lawyer.
While law school “teaches” you the law, internships are where you learn whether you actually want to practice law or whether this has all just been an incredibly expensive, stressful “passion project.” I was lucky enough to be able to do some actual substantive work this summer, where I discovered that I really did enjoy doing real life legal work. Phew, good thing, because I’ve been saying I want to be a lawyer for a long time.
Neutral: I didn’t eat out at cool lunch spots every day.
For my health, it was probably for the best that I didn’t eat lunch out every day. But instead, I stayed inside and told myself that I “deserved” dessert on a daily basis. Is that really better? Who knows!
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Kolleen Gladden ‘21
Photographer
Kolleen’s Wild Summer Adventure
It was Russell Baker who once said “Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” Perhaps nothing more aptly encapsulates my personal experience with the summer of 2020. It was certainly a rollercoaster of a season, which I think was more or less true for everyone. When Christina Luk ’21 asked me to write about my summer experience, I had to pause. It’s almost hard to trace when exactly summer began, as my brain may have entered another plane of existence the moment that pass/fail was announced last semester. It is a privilege to have several fond memories of those following months, which were split between long runs, watching my roommate Grace Tang ’21 play animal crossing, writing papers, and watching Kingdom or battling over Dominion with Grace, Ray Hou ’21, and Christina. When May rolled around, I made the difficult decision to leave three of my dear friends to journey back to my hometown of Joplin, Missouri.
After a weeklong detour in the Atlanta suburbs (which, now that I think about it, was the first time I spent any considerable length in a suburb) with Christian Sorensen ’21 and his family, I made it back to Joplin and began work. I had the fantastic pleasure of spending the following thirteen weeks working remotely full time for the Federal Public Defenders for the Western District of Missouri. Working with the federal public defenders was incredible. My first task was to create a template for motions for compassionate release under COVID-19, which is essentially a motion requesting an inmate be released or placed in home confinement due to having health problems that would put them at a greater risk of death should they contract the coronavirus. Putting these motions together was possibly my favorite part of the summer. I was also very fortunate to have supervisors who were incredibly accessible throughout the program. When I wanted to learn more about a facet of racial justice work that wasn’t explicitly related to my internship, my main supervisor held a town hall with twelve other attorneys just so I could pick their brains. I am beyond thankful to have worked there.
I’m sure outside of work summer activities looked different for everyone this summer. I spoke to classmates who canceled trips abroad and various ventures that are now discontinued until an undetermined point in the future. In Joplin, a typical summer might look somewhat like this: spending time with my same close-knit group of high school friends, sitting outside of Sonic with half-priced shakes, walking the mall, climbing water towers, and people watching at the infamous Seventh Street Wal-Mart. Due to the lack of initial COVID cases in Joplin, some of those activities were still viable for periods of time, within reason. Certainly one of the best parts of the summer was Christian’s arrival in late August. All relationships have their own unique milestones, and I think “voluntarily wants to come to Joplin for a week” has to be a pretty significant one. Although, considering the closest to Southwest Missouri this Atlanta boy had ventured was Illinois, I doubted whether he knew what he was getting himself into. It’s safe to say he didn’t—our week included, among other things: a car chase, an accidental run-in with a U.S. Marshal while searching for the famed haunted “Joplin Spooklight,” floating down Shoal Creek in a duct-taped inflatable raft, my favorite gas station (it sells, among other things, fuzzy dice, cowboy boots, pickled everything, full sets of medieval armor??), and, of course, a trip to the infamous Seventh Street Wal-Mart. As we loaded my car to begin the journey back to Charlottesville, he mused that he couldn’t wait to come back. Now that is a milestone.
We decided to turn the 20ish-hour drive from Joplin to Charlottesville into a multi-day road trip. Among our first stops was New Harmony, Indiana, the most interesting town you’ve probably never heard of. I only know it exists because I stopped there for gas on my first sojourn to Charlottesville two years ago. It was home to a socialist experiment in the early 1800s, with the intent of becoming a utopian society. The town, with a current population of about 700, has some truly fascinating remains from that time period. Several labyrinths can be found across the town, and I believe New Harmony’s logo is one such labyrinth in the shape of a brain. There is a large outdoor temple dedicated to all religions. Additionally, New Harmony has one of the largest collections of undersea fossils. It’s a truly interesting visit if you’re ever in the area. We also explored Cincinnati, where we found a secluded little vegetarian café (Sitwell’s Coffeehouse Act II), which was incredible. The walls were covered in amazing artwork, and their tofu banh mi, dirty chai, and caramel macchiato were all beyond phenomenal.
The final stop was Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Anyone who knows me well knows my love for cryptids and particularly the Mothman. The Mothman is an urban legend associated with this small West Virginian town, where sightings were first reported in the 1960s. The town has a Mothman museum where the history is fully explained, a coffeehouse that serves adorable (and delicious!) Mothman cookies, and (perhaps my favorite) a life-sized Mothman statue on their main street. If you enjoy cryptids and urban legends as much as I do, Point Pleasant is a must-visit.
There you have it, a glimpse of the highlight reel. I hope you all have a safe semester, and watch out for the moths.
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Andrew Teal ‘22
Guest Writer
Courts and Coding: My Summer as a Research Assistant
As a rising 2L, I spent this past summer working remotely as a research assistant for Professor Michael Livermore. Professor Livermore’s research explores multiple fields, from environmental law to computational analysis of the law, and I was one of three research assistants working with him this summer on a few of his ongoing projects. His current research spans a wide range of topics, and I was excited for the opportunity to work with him on projects involving data and law. I have been interested in how emerging technology will potentially disrupt the legal field, and Professor Livermore has explored this idea in depth through a unique combination of his legal expertise and his understanding of data analytics.
Although law students all faced unusual circumstances this summer, Professor Livermore did a great job planning an interesting and productive summer for his research assistants. On top of typical email updates, Professor Livermore held a weekly Zoom meeting with all of the research assistants at the same time. We spent this time getting feedback on our independent projects while also hearing about what each research assistant was working on. Professor Livermore was careful to only assign projects that we each found interesting, so we all worked on a variety of topics.
While I did work on more typical research assistant projects this summer, a large part of my summer was unconventional: Instead of legal research, I spent most of my time writing code. I’ve been interested in computer programming as a hobby, and Professor Livermore needed assistance with a project involving data and Python scripting. With assistance from both Professor Livermore’s colleagues at Dartmouth and Jon Ashley, head of UVA Law’s Legal Data Lab, I created datasets for statistical analysis, and I assisted in setting up a model to measure the influence of court opinions.
The main project I worked on aims to measure the influence of appellate opinions on one another over time. While court opinions usually cite preceding opinions that impact their rationale or decision, this project goes beyond citations and explores the actual text of opinions to measure each opinion’s influence. Using a statistical model that incorporates regressions and dynamic topic modelling, text from court opinions can be analyzed to show how the language used in those court opinions is evolving over time. As new opinions are written in different areas of the law, the way these opinions discuss a topic will impact the writing of future opinions. The model observes this semantic evolution to determine an opinion’s overall influence measurement. The project explores changes in opinion language at the appellate level, and this estimation of influence can be compared to the citations courts themselves point to as being influential. This process will hopefully shed light on how courts interact with and are persuaded by opinions of the past.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Professor Livermore this summer, and I am continuing to work with him on the influence project into the fall semester.
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