The End Of My Law School Moot Court Career

While critics consistently choose Citizen Kane to top the best of all time list, filmmakers choose Lawrence of Arabia. My favorite scene in the later comes relatively early in the epic. We see Lawrence on a number of occasions extinguish a match by closing his fingers around it. One of his friends tries it and burns himself.

"Lawrence, that hurts!" he complains.

"Of course it hurts," replies Lawrence.

"What's the trick then?"

"The trick is not minding that it hurts."

I enjoy writing and have some reasons to believe I am good at it. Oral argument, however, proved painful last spring. Still, I volunteered to go through it again this fall. This kind of thing is probably one of the reasons why I am in the 61.95%.

There was still a lot of pain, but based on barrister feedback after the rounds, I have made huge improvements. Unfortunately, Kristina and I still didn't do well enough to "make the break." That is, we are not one of the 16 teams (of the 44 that competed) that progress to the playoffs and enter the order of the barristers.

A barrister I admire told me I have the makings of a great speaker. His feedback got me thinking about volunteering to do it all yet again, except for the fact I'll be in practice court the next time I'll be around for a competition.

For better or worse, the decision is therefore moot.