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Two More Bits of Procrastination

Spent fifteen minutes wandering Lexis in between chapters of contracts outline. The two gems I found?

Entertainment for Hours
A Compendium of Clever and Amusing Law Review Writings: An Idiosyncratic Bibliography of Miscellany with in Kind Annotations Intended as a Humorous Diversion for the Gentle Reader, Baker, 51 Drake L. Rev. 105.

The title says it all. Any six of the articles here should waste away hours of study time.

Enough to Make the Most Diehard Marxist Love Richard Posner
No, really. I'm serious. Whatever you think you thought of Posner, read Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1343. OK, he's nakedly partisan for his hometown Chicago manual over that interloper from Harvard, but after your 1L memos, this should be music to your ears:

The time that law students and lawyers spend mastering and applying the manifold rules of the Bluebook is time taken away from other lawyerly activities, mainly from thinking about what they are writing. It is so hard to get the citation forms right that the writer or editor who has done so is apt to feel that he has acquitted himself of a difficult task and should be allowed to rest his brain. Less attention can be given writing and rewriting because so much is devoted to forms most of which don't matter worth a straw to the reader. Instead of learning the Uniform Commercial Code the student learns the Uniform Citation Code, which is almost as long, and far more arbitrary.

Amen, brother.

Update: Using the first article and links therefrom, Will Baude has proven that Judge Easterbrook is a videogame fan. You can probably score some points with the esteemed judge by introducing him or his law clerks to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME).

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Two More Bits of Procrastination:

» how not to write from Crescat Sententia
Anthony Rickey has done some valuable Lexis-mining to come across an old article by Richard Posner[Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1343]. He cites a teaser-paragraph, but omits the best part of the article-- the anti-lessons of... [Read More]

» hello to the bluebook from Crescat Sententia
Maybe it is merely a function of being (still) awake at 5:41 A.M. (lousy habits die hard), but blue-booking my memo is actually kind of fun. Relatedly, if copy-editing under the TNR style guide was like working in a non-final... [Read More]

Comments

Very nice link.
Blasphemy! "[T]hat interloper from Harvard" is actually published by the editors of -four- legal periodicals, including Columbia's. See Bluebook R. 15.1.2 ex. 5.
Yeah, but Posner seems to reserve a particular animosity for Harvard. Go figure. ;)
Should have mentioned it in your clerkship app.

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