The Canadian Law School Blog

Thursday, January 30, 2003
Some Thoughts on the Importance of Locale
After finishing my paper on state immunity and the enforcement of arbitral awards (which was interesting but translations of French jurisprudence is bloody hard to find) I was reflecting on the fact that there are a lot of things that profs just can't teach. My international arbitration class is one, its taught by a practitioner who actually participates in international arbitration all the time. My corporate transactions class on mergers and acquisitions is taught by two practitioners who are always talking about how they were involved in some big transaction or another. The insight they give is very interesting and gives you a lot of different, not always better, insight than from a prof who hasn't been practising for some time.

These guys always have to work somewhere where these things are happening though, and no offence to smaller Canadian cities that have law schools, but most of this stuff goes down in few big Canadian cities, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Somehow I doubt even Calgary would cut it. I think this would be something to think about when picking a law school. If anyone has any stories on how they have found it easy or frustrating to pick up these kinds of classes in a less metropolitan setting I would be happy to be corrected.

Comments-[ comments.]
Posted by Setu @ 1:50 p.m.

Friday, January 24, 2003
What a Crappy Week

That about sums it up. Starting last Friday when I got my grades back which were decidedly mediocre (Corps 75, Tax 75, Nat Res 73 ugh) to Monday when I didn't get a job in Calgary to the rest of the week that I spent hunting english translations of French Cour de Cassation cases for my international arbitration paper I just haven't been having much fun lately. Even hockey was depressing as we won 16-2 but it took me till 3 am to get home on Vancouver's silly buses. I am adding a link to a dedicated Canadian law school discussion site though. Thanks to Lana for sending it to me to add to the site. I remember visiting this site before I got into law school but found the discussion a little slow. Maybe a few of my dedicated visitors will want to pop on over for a little more discussion of law school. Maybe I will even sneak in and check it out. Hope the rest of everybody else's semester is going fine.

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Posted by Setu @ 2:44 p.m.

Tuesday, January 07, 2003
It's Still Before Xmas Right?
Sorry about that all, but packing and shopping and the last of my takehome exam caught up with me. In any case, it went down like this. Corps was fine. The questions were predictable except one thing. We spent 4 or 5 classes (two weeks worth of class) going over a comparison of the BC Companies Act and its replacement Bill 49. This is a pretty big chunk of class time so I expected there would be some incorporation of the material on the exam, but there was none, ridiculous. Tax was good. Again fairly predictable but it was a little nicer than corps because the issues were divided up into separate questions so you could divvy up time and focus more easily. That was all of my traditional exams. My EU paper was done and handed in on time, but it may not have been stellar because I was pretty sick of it by the end. As for the Natural Resources Take home exam, what can you do, it was stupid, mine probably sucked, I'll get over it.

I had some interviews with some Calgary firms on my home as well. They went fairly well. One interesting story though, I had an interview with Blakes in October as some may remember who follow this site. It was a second interview after my OCI in September. Yet in December they sent me a letter indicating that they were not able to conduct a second interview with me. Thanks for the form letter guys. I guess that means you won't be offering me a job in January huh? The other fun thing, apparently at the meeting of the firms to decide what day they were going to all offer jobs to students, they decided the day would be Monday the 21st. Yet Monday is the 20th. Now the firms can't decide if they will offer on the 20th or the 21st. As if I needed more anxiety in my life.

Grades come back on the 17th, the true measure of my work this semester. Hopefully they will be ok. I also have a paper due on February 4th, way too freaking soon as I am not really into this at all yet. I have apparently also been chosen for the all star game in intramurals despite my decidedly un-all star like performance. Should be fun anyways.

A last note, I was recently asked if there was any other sites on Canadian Law School I could recommend. I couldn't think of any that weren't linked on my site. If anybody else can think of one, please let me know. Good luck to those with applications still out there and for those still trying to get them out before February. Good luck in the new semester to anyone else in school.

Comments-[ comments.]
Posted by Setu @ 12:41 a.m.