Papers and More Papers

I’ve finished the last papers of my academic career. Normally in law school, you don’t have a lot of papers. The only grade in most classes is the final exam. It requires a lot of effort to make sure you are keeping up with your work. It also takes a lot of time to figure out what each individual professor is looking for. This semester though, I produced about sixty pages of written work. This has caused me to reflect down memory lane about some of the papers I have written in law school.

The first paper I wrote was for aviation law. It was a pretty straightforward assignment, so I chose a safe topic. A lot of times, you have these grandiose ideas about what you would like to write about, but that isn’t always your best bet. Professors typically don’t reward creativity. It was entitled “Aviation Accidents: Where do you bury the survivors.” The title was based on the joke about when a plane crashes on the U.S./Canada border and the punch line is where do you bury the survivors? This paper examined which courts should have jurisdiction over airplane accidents.

My second paper was my law review note, already discussed on this blog. My third paper was entitled “CYBER TERRORISM: THE THREAT A CYBER-ATTACK POSES TO THE GRID.” It basically examined the current vulnerabilities of the power grid and the likelihood of a cyber-attack on the grid. It’s pretty scary actually. There are some viruses like Stuxnet which basically go in undetected and can wreak a lot of havoc.

For Administrative Law we had a lot of mini-papers and still had a final exam. Even though the teacher was all about due process and notice, I still don’t know the weight she applied to each assignment or the final. One of the more fun assignments was actually taking part in the notice and comment procedures for new regulations that are being introduced. I commented on the Proposed Rule for National Cemeteries which was trying to change the definition of what is considered a demonstration. I probably really didn’t care because I think it’s probably a good thing that National Cemeteries limit what activities take place there, but I made a First Amendment free speech argument and did really well on the assignment. Turns out I was only one of a few people to comment on the rule. If you ever need something to do, go ahead and search for a regulation on Regulations.gov to comment on.

I also did a group project where we created an LLC operating agreement. That was pretty cool to do. This semester I had contract drafting where we drafted a Performance Agreement and a Drafting Agreement. I really enjoyed that class. I also wrote a paper for my Transportation Law class. I wrote it about the red and white reflective tape on the sides and back of tractor trailers. It was actually a fun paper. Just never thought I would be able to write a 20+ page paper about tape on trucks. I also had another paper about energy efficiency projects in the military. It’s been a lot of fun to write about these various topics, but I’m glad I don’t have to write anymore.