By: Amy Riederer
Most 1Ls enter school looking to be extraordinary. They are ready to take the school by storm and outperform their peers. They plan not only to be legal scholars, but legal rock stars. By the end of the first semester, however, some will have fallen and some will be barely hanging on. No doubt some will be rock stars, but some will just want to crawl under a rock.
First semester for 1Ls means time spent on Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Contracts. I offer advice only on the latter: watch daytime television, and not just any daytime television, but court television. I speak not of boring daytime soaps where Bob’s cousin is actually the illegitimate child and second cousin of Bob’s twice-deceased parakeet. No, no. I speak of the awesome power of daytime small claims court, and in particular, The People’s Court.
I happened to have a break the first semester of my 1L year during which I went home, had lunch and watched T.V. At that time of day, the programming pickings are slim, and one day I picked The People’s Court for that precious hour of sanity, probably because there was some crazy plaintiff that caught my attention. “Bill claims that Sue sold him a chinchilla and told him to call if he had any problems, but when Bill called Sue to say the chinchilla had spontaneously combust, Sue told him to go fly a kite. This is the case of the pet perjurer.” Or something like that. Soon, I was hooked. I never missed the show (and actually I still watch it frequently).
The funny thing is, about five weeks into the semester, I started hearing things that sounded uncannily familiar. In amongst the car sales gone bad and slumlord v. deadbeat tenant cases were terms I had heard somewhere in a far off place: caveat emptor, breach of contract, mitigating damages. Had I drifted into a parallel universe in my stress-induced insanity? Had law school been made into a compelling T.V. show during which I could be both entertained and educated? Actually yes, it had.
I bought the E&E for Contracts. I even looked at a treatise once, I think. Hands down, my best supplement was daytime T.V. During the course of a semester, every major concept covered in class was covered on The People’s Court. I can’t speak for Judge Judy, Judge Mathis, or Divorce Court, but The People’s Court was my golden outline.
For those of you still unfamiliar with this gem of a show, the format is quite simple. After the voice-over tells an incredulous synopsis and the crazy parties tell their crazy stories, Judge Marilyn Milian delivers the actual law and explains it, but with a bit of showmanship of course. You can expect her to say “Put a fork in me, I am so done!” or “Do I look like I need your help? Do you look like you’re losing?” at least once. Amongst the yelling, silencing, gavel banging and quippy remarks, though, she really never gets it wrong. And if you don’t get it the first time, after every case Harvey Levin, my personal hero, summarizes exactly what the law is. I couldn’t believe it. The more I watched, the more I was sucked in, and (incredibly) the more Contracts made sense.
I did well in Contracts. No, I didn’t get the honors A, but I did well. And so can you if you just follow my simple schedule of success: go to class, do the reading, watch The People’s Court, succeed. As an extra perk, you, too, can know what to do if your chinchilla spontaneously combusts.
Amy is a 3L and can be reached at amy.riederer@valpo.edu.
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