Finishing the Brief

I spent the majority of yesterday popping pseudoephedrine pills¹ at Wilde Roast while finishing the final draft of my Moot Court brief. I felt really sick, but this “awful” had to be finished. If Webster’s dictionary had an illustration for the word “tedious” it would look like this:

I think the hypo for the moot court brief is boring and the procedural posture is awkward: an interlocutory appeal of a denial to suppress a subpoena.

Um.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I have completed four oral arguments on this brief, and my last one is this coming week. Although my brief could be better utilized as a weapon to beat skinny-pants-wearers, I am so overjoyed to finish with Moot Court.

I spent some time this week watching real court proceedings in Anoka, which are vastly more interesting than things in the State of Moot.

Watching real lawyers argue also gives me a new appreciation for how important oral arguments are and how easy Moot Court is. If a lawyer can – with a straight face – ask a judge for leniency for a defendant who had a 2.9 BAC when he terrorized his wife with a gun, then I can slap on a tie, waltz in front of my legal writing professors, and advocate for some make-believe Moot Court clients.

Unlike the raging husband, the Moot Court clients aren’t standing next to me. There’s no sobbing wife, angry mother, or threat of jail time. The lack of stakes makes Moot Court feel like a very charmed exercise. And yes, I just said that.

¹Tylenol Severe Congestion. But I’ll let you know when I start using illicit drugs.