Same Song, Slightly New Dance

Yeah, we got about two-and-a-half feet overnight Saturday. I tried to come into the library yesterday and decided to stay home instead when I was blocked-in by a two-foot snowdrift against my front door.

I’m working on an intra-office memo regarding 29 USCS 2101 et seq., the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. Our fact pattern indicates that a New York law firm wants to downsize and outsource about 55 jobs to India. My responsibility is to figure what, if any, legal ramifications this course of action implicates.

It’s for my Legal Research and Writing class, the curriculum of which is just terrible. I have some sympathy for the instructor, since his hands are tied by the same curriculum, but I’m really disappointed with the program as a whole. There’s far too little emphasis on revision and far too much on finding the one, right answer by interpreting the authoritative case law and statutes according to the legal orthodoxy. In other words, I’m having trouble assimilating to the culture. It’s remarkably anti-academic for a school, but maybe that’s what you get in a professional program.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to be introduced to the orthodoxy, I just don’t want to be limited by it. I’d much rather be coming at my problems from the strange angles and directions Rachel once described. And there’s far too little critical analysis of the assumptions that underpin both legislation and case law as well. In short, I’m frustrated by the culture and the lack of opportunity for respectful, constructive conversation.