ONE HELL:
Update, 2004
- by Alice
Marie Beard
Yes,
this Camp Fire Girl is now a law school grad.
My adventure was an
unconventional way to start at a law school
ranked 82nd and finish at one ranked 38th. It was like
being behind by several touchdowns at the end of
the first quarter, but managing to win the game:
I was lucky and would not recommend the game plan
to the faint of heart.
The differences between the two
schools were dramatic. For me, the new school was
a good match. I found a real community willing to
accept this middle-aged femme au foyer.
In
addition to the usuals, I survived Law &
Economics, Administrative Law, Business
Associations, Commercial Paper, Evidence, Wills,
Domestic Relations, Negotiations, Federal
Election Law, Legal History, and a couple of
legal clinics. I had front-row seats at the
Supreme Court at oral aguments for a case dealing
with Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Our professor
had written one of the amicus briefs, and he
arranged reserved seating for us. I wrote about
the annulment of the
marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII, and I read about the legal scholar who
wrote, "One ought not to have so
delicate a nose that he cannot bear the smell of
a hog." And, no, he wasn't a
Hoosier. 
In Law & Econ, we learned,
"The glue that holds the deal together is
surplus on each side," sort of like a jelly
sandwich. In Admin Law, we learned to bet on
government agencies because of Chevron deference. In Business Associations, it
was "the business judgment rule." In
Commercial Paper, we learned that it's the words
"to the order of" that make an
instrument negotiable. In Evidence, we learned
that "liar" is not a legal term;
instead, we "impeach a witness" by
proving that she made "prior inconsistent
statements." In Wills, it was -- as with any
contract -- that a valid will requires (1)
capacity or a court-appointed guardian ad
litem, (2) no undue influence, (3) no fraud
in the inducement, (4) no fraud in the factum,
and (5) no fraud on the court, and that in a case
of adult adoption between adulterers, the
solution is to have the adoption ruled
void ab initio. In
Domestic Relations, we were reminded that
marriage laws are by individual state -- that
what is a "legal marriage" in one state
may not be the same in another, and that the feds
stay out of the argument unless things rise to a
violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process
Clauses of the 14th Amendment. Loving v.
Virginia (1967).
In Federal Election Law, I
learned that I must be reading a Bill of Rights
different from the one read by the Justices
behind the majority decision in McConnell v.
FEC. The lengthy
opinion reminds me of the words, "The lady
doth protest too much." [NOTE: McConnell
was largely overturned by Citizens
United in January
2010.]
During my
2nd semester at the dream school, I saw a
connect-the-dots situation that could create an
endowment for the law school. I emailed the idea
to Dean Daniel Polsby. He didn't laugh, and he
didn't dismiss the possibility. Instead, he wrote
back, "Tell me whom I'd need to talk
to." I pulled together information about how
university endowments work, learned from research
that the endowment should be at least a million
dollars, and gave the information to the person I
knew who knew the people who could put the deal
together on his side. The man I knew doesn't live
in a world of million-dollar endowments; he wears
20-year-old shoes and hand sews patches on the
knees of his 30-year-old Army pants. The nice
thing about such men is that you can be plain
spoken with them. I reasoned that we're all gonna
die some time, and an endowment could help carry
on his life's work. Eight months after I first
contacted the dean with the idea, the
million-dollar endowment was a done deal.
No law
school can change the reality that the stresses
and pressures on returning homemakers differ from
the stresses and pressures on young law students.
 Late in 2002, my son was hit by a car.
His thigh bone shattered into four pieces, and an
inch of bone was pulverized into dust. Ten hours
after seeing him come out of surgery, I had to
stand and deliver oral arguments in a pretend
scenario based on the Bakke, Hopwood, and Grutter cases. My son is a U.S. Marine who
survives on raw guts and a titanium rod in his
left leg. Four days after the accident, he got to
the polls to vote in the 2002 elections, and 18
months later he completed a 31-mile hike in under
nine hours.
 Also since I began at the dream school,
my daughter has grown up. We went prom dress
shopping together, and I was one of the rare
parents at "senior beach week," a
Maryland custom for graduating high-school
seniors. She learned to parallel park well enough
to get a driver's license; then she banged up the
car enough times that the price of car insurance
quadrupled. But, she learned how to grow up, and
I learned how to let her grow up. She spent a
summer in Ecuador, completed an associate's
degree, and transferred to the state university.
She still lives at home; I still interview the
young men in her life, and she still ignores my
opinions. We're still working on my believing
that she's "all grown up."
Although I am far from the best
mom, my son and my daughter always have been the
most important part of my life. When I was a
young girl, I didn't dream of being a lawyer; I
dreamed of being a mom. My kids joke that I
should market myself as "Momma Beard: Ready
to save your kid's butt, or help you kick it if
you have to."
Next up?
The Bar Exam. Like many law students, I filed for
character and fitness approval while still in law
school. Along with finger prints, credit reports,
and driving records all the way back to when the real Hoosiers
coach taught me how to
drive, the Bar examiners wanted five character
references. Whoever saw my application must have
chuckled: Three of the five who vouched for my
character have known me for more than 45 years.
We all graduated from high school together, and
I'm the self-appointed news maven for our high-school graduating class.
The Bar Exam is a two-day
event. The first day will be six hours of essay
questions. The second day will be the Multistate
Bar Exam (MBE): six hours for 200 multiple-choice
questions on Property, Contracts, Criminal Law,
Torts, Constitutional Law, Sales, and Evidence.
Here's a description of the test:
| "Bar
applicants must choose the best answer
from four stated alternatives.
There are many instances with two
'correct' answers, but the applicant must
choose the better. Also, some
questions will include answers with no
'correct' answers, just one that is
better than the other alternatives." |
An additional
exam I'll have to pass to be licensed is the
Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam: two
hours, 50 multiple-choice questions on the "law
of lawyering."
My law
school journey ended with a J.D. from a law
school better than any on my wish list when I
began dreaming of law school. Surely God had a
hand in it.
WoHeLo,
| Alice Marie Beard, |
| George Mason
University School of Law |
P.S.
Special note to the Owasco-Rossville cousins:
Would one of you please play proxy for me and go
down to the Wildcat to set off a 12-gauge in a
celebratory blast for this great-granddaughter of
Katie Hooker?
I'd like to think that she'd smile at my
achieving this goal.
Graduation photos
Off-site links:
|
email Alice
|
