Jeremy's Weblog

I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. This is my weblog. It tries to be funny. E-mail me if you like it. For an index of what's lurking in the archives, sorted by category, click here.

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Goofus and Gallant go to law school.

When I was a kid, I used to read Highlights magazine. They had a cartoon series about two kids named Goofus and Gallant. Goofus would always mess stuff up, while Gallant was the perfect child. What if they went to law school?

Gallant always shows up to class on time, quietly takes his seat, plugs his laptop into the nearest outlet, and takes out his neatly-highlighted casebook and compact set of handwritten case briefs.

Goofus shows up fifteen minutes late, trips on the stairs down the aisle, knocks the pretty girl's coat off the back of her seat, accidentally drops his laptop's power cord into his cup of coffee, starts a fire, and burns down the law school.

Gallant does the reading every night, takes careful notes, and spends each afternoon updating his concise and well-organized class outline, in preparation for the eventual exam.

Goofus orders the casebook on half.com but ends up getting the wrong edition, doesn't figure it out until six weeks into the term when he first opens it, buys an outline off a classmate, experiments with LSD the morning of the exam, and ends up with the same grade as Gallant anyway.

Gallant buys a brand new suit for 2L interviews, along with matching shoes, and the hair gel that the Fab Five told him to get when he went on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as part of the summer program at the firm he worked after 1L year.

Goofus wears a dog collar to the interview, tells the firm he thinks they didn't deserve their top-ten Vault ranking, and urinates on his interviewer's leg. He doesn't get an offer, but at least he has a good story to tell.

Gallant graduates summa cum laude and goes on to make partner at a prestigious Wall Street law firm.

Goofus dies happy.