Author: Tatiana Becker

BC Law Class of ’21 Celebrates 3L Week!

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Four days from graduation, I think it’s safe to say that the 3L class has really been through it this year. Somehow we’ve persevered through crashed and lagging zoom meetings, sneezing into our own faces under masks in socially distanced classrooms, and not one, not two, but three rounds of remote exams taken in all corners of the globe.

So this week, we celebrate. Because we have freaking earned it! The 3L Week Committee–comprised of LSA President Kayla Snyder and Vice President Morgan Lam, 3L Reps Julianna Hernandez and Rachel Taylor, and me (Chair of the 3L Week/Gift Committee)–wanted to seize the opportunity for the first time in a long time to actually be together. We wanted to give our class the party it deserves! It was tough to plan, adjust, and re-plan and re-adjust around COVID guidelines, but the Committee put together a fantastic schedule.

Kicking it off last Friday night, we celebrated with the first bar review in a hot minute at BC After Dark at the Hillside Café, where graduating students enjoyed lots of drinks and delicious food at their very own outdoor on campus bar!

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COVID-19, One Year Later: We Are Still Here

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525,600 minutes. Daylights and sunsets and midnights and cups of coffee. I’ve always found that Rent offers a beautiful melodic sampling of ways to conceptualize this fickle thing we call time. But the question, however harmonized, remains: how do you measure a year? 

Thinking too long on this subject brings a heavy lump to my throat. It’s been one year. We’ve lost so much and so fast. Tearing apart businesses, families, and entire communities, the pandemic has stripped us of so much of that closeness our society once had: a handshake over a new business agreement, a scorched smile over too hot coffee on the morning commute crammed in a subway car, a visit to see a loved one, a high five with a stranger over a touchdown at the sports bar. We were told to be, for an undetermined amount of time and with no warning, alone. And yet, the very science and expertise unto which we cling to guide us through this madness is debated like the merits of contemporary art by politicians. Some people believe this is a globally orchestrated hoax. Our democracy is still in the ICU. This year has, as a great mentor of mine says, given our entire society a CAT scan. It’s shown our inequities and injustices. It’s shown the unyielding power of the few and the overwhelming lack of access for the many.

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Cancel Culture: A Conversation

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What is cancel culture? Is it a side effect of the era of social media and the 24-hour news cycle? Is it the gap-filling mechanism for the space where the American justice system has failed and yet society demands a reckoning? Is it a manifestation of the United States punitive justice methodology? Is it merely the newest iteration of an otherwise ancient human custom? 

These questions and more were posed and pondered in a recent conversation held by the Criminal Law Society and BC Law Professor Steven Koh. Students shared their views on how to define cancel culture, who is subject or not subject to it, its efficacy, and its justness. The discussion stirred many of my own thoughts on this phenomenon.

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A Guide to Surviving OCI (and Any Job Search) Without Losing Your Humanity

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What follows is a virtual conversation between me and my friend Meg Green ’21 about our experience with OCI. We actually met during OCI callbacks at a Boston firm last year.

That was a dramatic title. What do you mean about humanity?

T: What I mean is that despite this On-Campus Interviewing (OCI) process seeming (for many) like the defining moment of your career, in which you either succeed heroically or fall tragically like an ancient empire, it’s just a job placement process, likely the first (or second or twentieth) over the course of your long and exciting career. Approach it with the correct perspective. Is it scary? Yes. Is it awkward? 100%. If you strike out will you fail at anything and everything else you attempt for the rest of your life? Of course not. That’s absurd. That’s all I am getting at. Stress can bring out the worst in people.  So just go through this process humanely and humbly and know that keeping your cool and being nice to people is never the wrong approach.

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Want to Thank Your Mentor? Become One.

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I once said thank you to one of my mentors. He replied “You’re welcome, but there’s no need to thank me. All I ask is that you do the same for others.” And while I had certainly tried before that moment to help out the newest new kids whenever they called and asked, it hadn’t occurred to me in quite that way. So this blog post is an attempt to do as he asked and to urge you to do the same!

Mentors are critical to success in law school and the legal field (and most likely just life in general). They provide insight, validation, constructive criticism, emotional support, wisdom, and in the best moments real friendship. I’ve befriended many of my mentors over the years and keeping in touch with them, even casually, has given me a lot of warmth and happiness. I’ve seen them succeed and grow in their own career paths and as they do, they continue to inspire me to be the best version of myself. I can say without question that every accomplishment worth noting in my life is due in no insignificant part to wonderful mentors.

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Transfer Students: The Verdict Is In

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Well, it’s officially been a year at my not-so-new-anymore law school. Given the state of the world, it actually feels like I’ve been to three law schools in the last two years: my 1L school, BC, and the Zoom School of Law. This certainly isn’t the “transfer experience” I would have chosen, but that’s true for every person in the world right now experiencing this bizarre era in which we live.

I won’t lie, it’s been a weird year. I felt like right about the time I started to get adjusted to school and feel comfortable, it all got pulled out from under me and we switched to remote learning. Reflecting on this experience is difficult because of the truncated school year. But what I do know is this:

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LSA Elections at the Zoom School of Law

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As our entire academic reality has shifted onto Zoom, fundraisers have begun to raise money on behalf of the Zoom School of Law which many thousands of law students now joke is where we all go to school.

And yet in some ways the world keeps turning, and that provides minor solace to those who crave a scheduled life. We press on, talking about final exams, registering for fall classes, and daydreaming about future plans.

In that scheduled rhythm, we find ourselves in LSA elections. ‘Tis the time of year where our peers campaign for our vote to lead us through the twists and turns of the next year of law school. It involves campaign promises, town hall style forums, and this year, a very stable internet connection.

Our current LSA president Tyler Hendricks had these wise words to share with us on why we should continue to care about this election cycle:

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We Are Human Beings First And Law Students Second

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Editor’s note: due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, Boston College has moved all classes online and sent students home for the semester. The BC Law Impact blog has suspended its normal posting schedule, and bloggers are now focused on writing about the impact of the shutdown and the current state of the world on their academic and social experiences as law students. We are all in this together; let’s find our way through together.

I am a law student who, like everyone else at BC Law (and literally everywhere else on Earth), wishes this wasn’t happening.

I am a student attorney trying to figure out how to help my clients, since the courts have all but shut down.

I am a millennial who has grown up in endless war, and I probably have a lot of residual trauma from multiple mass shootings in my community.

I am a teacher whose first grade Hebrew students are going stir-crazy in their homes while I try to teach them on Zoom.

I am a daughter of parents whose small business has been shuttered in this crisis.

I am a sister worrying about my siblings who are suddenly out of work without a safety net to fall back on.

I am a partner of a full-time graduate student, who is also doing his learning and his part-time teaching jobs from our apartment.

But before all of those things, I am a human being living in a community that is being tested like never before, in ways large and small.

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Moot Court: Mock Trial’s Nerdy But Cool Older Sibling

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Note: The 60th Annual Wendell F. Grimes Moot Court Competition Finals will be held at BC Law on Wednesday, March 11 at 4:00 pm in East Wing Room 120. 

Television shows like Judge Judy prepare every person in the English-speaking world for what could possibly go on at a mock trial competition: there are opening statements, directs, crosses, redirects, closing arguments, and certainly tons of objections and shocking witness impeachments. These are all aimed at typically convincing a jury that your side has better evidence to prove your point, or in the alternative, that the other side simply lacks sufficient evidence to prove theirs.

While this is, I am sure, one of the many cool things about grade school, college, and yes indeed law school, I have found mock trial’s lesser known appellate sibling to be much more entertaining.

Picture this: you, your moot court partner, your opposing counsel and their partner, a panel of typically three judges (often actual judges and high powered successful attorneys), and a fascinating point of law. Your job in a fifteen minute span is to engage in an eloquent and respectful conversation with the judges about the issue at hand. Opposing counsel cannot object to your argument. In fact, the only people who can interrupt you at all are the judges who, if you’re lucky, are peppering you with questions about holes in your arguments and points raised by your opposing counsel. Or they’re asking you about circuit courts that disagree with your theory of the case. Because there’s no jury for whom you must translate the law into something a lay (read normal) person can understand, you just have a bunch of highly intelligent, legally trained people discussing the nuances of our legal system. It’s a total nerd party!

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