Goodbye Free Legal Research

Ugh. You know why Westlaw and Lexis are akin to drug dealers? They get you hooked on to their services during law school -- when you have access to just about anything imaginable, and then they take it away after you graduate. Here are some free resources I've been finding though that may make it easier to get by:

University Law Project (free law review access): http://www.lawreview.org/

Findlaw (cases, statutes): http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/

LII (Cornell's compendium of statutes, codes): http://www.law.cornell.edu/

Thomas (Current Bills, and Federal Registers): http://thomas.loc.gov/

ICRC's Treaties and Customary International Law: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList2/Humanitarian_law:Treaties_and_customary_law?OpenDocument

A New Chapter

Stream of Consciousness: So, I'm done with school now after three years. In a whirlwind of activities and events, I'm suddenly plopped down back where I was three years ago -- my parents' house here in northern Virginia. Things are certainly different now -- my sister's done with college, my older brother's moved back here and my friends and everything else around me are three years older. Some things are not different -- the traffic, the weather and my mother's nurturing and nagging character.

Today was the first day of bar review classes. There was no time wasted at all getting us in and going. It really is true that you can almost forget about everything you learned in law school and just review with the bar class. The books cover everything and though you may seriously want to question the gray areas of the law, like they made you do on law school exams, you end up not doing so, because the tests aren't about that now -- they just want the straight up answers in the common situations.

I'm a little bit worried about finding a job and seeing what happens after this -- is this how some people were after college when they were job-less as well? Not knowing the future and missing school (not the classes, but the idea of it)?

More later...