We have an annual Moot Court competition at Harvard Law School for 1L's in which we all have to write briefs and present oral arguments in teams of two. At the end of it all, our section of forty people, all of whom had worked on the same case, held the “1st Annual Ames Briefs Awards,” which consisted of several pairs of white men's briefs, with categories written on them.
     Among the many categories were: “Most Likely to Mention Starving Orphans in Her Brief,” “Looks Best in Briefs,” “Most Mentions of the George Foreman Grill in her Oral Argument,” and, last but not least, “The Pubic Safety Award,” given to the team whose first draft of their brief concerning the “public safety exception” to Miranda v. Arizona contained a slight typo ...
     

     It's the first night of class in Reasoning, Writing and Advocacy II (our legal writing course). The professor distributes to the class a tremendous amount of photocopied reading material handouts (about a 3 or 4-inch stack). Leaving class, buckling under the weight of the handouts, one of my classmates jokingly asks another when he planned to read all of the new materials. The student responded, "Hell, I never read any of the (expletive deleted) she gave us last semester." At that point, he turned around to find none other than the diminutive writing professor standing behind him. "I guess I shouldn't have said that," he said meekly.