Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

KASSIE MCALEAR

Dear Melbourne Law School,

What the heck?
​
What’s with the botched class enrolment and elective process? You’re making studying law so much harder than it should be. Going into third year, I’ve heard more complaints from fellow students than I have in the last two years! This is a #rant, so gimme the mic coz I AM MAD.

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

KARAN DESAI

This is a follow-up playlist to the LMR one, with the main theme being "second year" — but it's still usable regardless of year! So here are 60 songs for each day until the end of semester. Hopefully you find it #motivational, #relatable or at least #nottoodepressing. Either way, it should pair well with the hard times, the good times, the weird times and just the times that we all have at some point during the JD.

Karan is a Third Year JD Student and the 2019 Layout Editor for De Minimis.

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

​YING WONG

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

S. NOTT

I caught you picking your nose! I saw it. You saw me saw it. You passed it off as a vigorous nose rub, but we both know. You had your finger straight up your honker as if you were trying to finger your most lubricated orifice like the world would end tomorrow. What did you find in there, padawan? Did you hit gold? Was it one of those hard nuggets that kind of hurts to dislodge? A wet gooey but satisfying bit to pull out? Or did I schnoz-block you before the fruits of your labour were actualised? You are not alone. If anyone takes the time to watch people engrossed in their own work in public spaces they too will behold the fallacy of privacy: where people think they’re in their own bed at night, winding down, no one cleaning the pool outside the window who might catch them in the act. It’s like searching for shooting stars: you don’t see them unless you’ve been properly looking for a while – and then WHAM the stars are flying around like rice at a wedding – or looking at ants in the grass – you thought you were sitting on a terra nullius patch of grass to claim with your chubby derriere but then, upon closer inspection, you’re actually just a colonial glob who has squished a thousand beautiful and harmless bugs with your stupid whomper. Nose pickers are everywhere. It starts with a sniffle, a little nostril wiggle, a finger jiggle that just can’t be tamed… I’m not here to snot-shame anyone though. As Lilly Allen sings, ‘everyone’s at it’. Please, by all means, pick away… but know that these hills have eyes.

S. Nott is a Third Year JD Student

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

JACOB KAIROUZ, with apologies to Allen Ginsberg

Avocado: I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.​
Avocado: three dollars and fifty cents, 15 January 2019.
I can’t stand my own generation.
Millennials, when will you stop being so selfish?
Go eat your Saturday brunch.
Stop trying to pretend people care about your Instagram post.
I won’t write my poem till I’ve had my single origin cold brew.
Millennials, when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will your collection of houseplants no longer spark joy?
When will you grow weary of your virulent consumerism?
When will you care about something other than the amount of Facebook likes you got after you posted a photo of yourself dressed as a pixie at Meredith Music Festival?
I’m sick of these insane demands.
You should have seen me reading Mabo.
I am addressing YOU.
How can you let your emotional life be run my Instagram?
I am obsessed by Instagram.
I browse it every morning.
Its icon stares at me as I try inanely to get out of bed.
I look through photos as I sit on the tram.
It’s always telling me about fun. Law students have fun. Landscape architects have fun. Even baristas have fun. Everyone’s having fun but me.
It occurs to me that I am a millennial.
I am talking to myself again.

​Jacob is a Third Year JD Student.

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

JACOB KAIROUZ

I’ve been having to explain to a few people lately why my bank card is broken. By ‘broken’ I mean almost split in half. Thankfully the chip remains intact or I would be entirely cut off from this breathing world. “It’s because I’ve spent too much,” I joke to people as I go through the checkout. This comes up particularly when people grab the card and push it wantonly against the contactless reader. “It’s broken,” I tell them. “I suppose that the more difficult it is to spend money, the better.”

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

JASMINE HOLMES

Loathsome spinning doors
I veer to the side— oh fuck
Five second delay

***

Nameless love of mine
‘One dollar doughnuts!’, he sings
The nice coffee man 

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

ALEXANDER BUCK

‘Climate change science’ has been known about since the 1880s thanks to a Swedish chemist, Sevante Arrhenius, who calculated the effect of carbon dioxide on our planet’s temperature. Fast-forward one century, and in the 1970s fossil fuel companies started to believe that those physico-chemical equations may have been correct, investing millions of dollars into climate research. By 1977 Exxon senior scientist James Black told the company’s management committee that there was ‘general scientific agreement’ that what was then called the ‘greenhouse effect’ was most likely caused by CO2 released by humans. From 16 October 1979, we already knew that “fossil fuel consumption (would) cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050” and that the problem was “great and urgent”. In June 1988 NASA scientist James Hansen took climate change to the US Congress, stating that the planet was already warming. The issue was immediately buried by millions of dollars in lobbying from fossil fuel companies. Today, companies, led by BP and Shell, spend nearly $200m a year on lobbying to delay efforts to prevent climate breakdown. Thank you BP for giving the government the money to pay for my education. But at what cost?

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

ELIF SEKERCIOGLU

​Elif Sekercioglu shares her experience from the opening night of the 2019 Public Interest Practice Skills Program.

Community Legal Centres perform important social justice functions within the community. Through volunteer programs, these unique community organisations are where many law students get their first exposure to legal practice environments.

​When I started volunteering at a community legal centre (‘CLC’) in my first year, it was the printer that filled me with dread. For the first few weeks, the printer and I were engaged in a discreet battle of wills, where I tried photocopying double-sided A4 and it returned my documents in A3 with half the pages missing. Then there were the client interviews. The interviewee might express their anger that they had already answered the questions (they had — but to the Department of Immigration, not me), there were clients who were evasive, and those whose answers stretched far beyond the boundaries of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into a story about their past. When I was volunteering at Fitzroy Legal Service last year, the criminal lawyer and I were unexpectedly called into the Supreme Court because the jury had a question. I sat off to the side of the courtroom, surrounded by practitioners dressed demurely in black. I was wearing a bright red jumper. I’m sure nobody noticed or cared, but I kept my knitwear to less blaring shades for the rest of the trial.

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

CONCERNED CITIZEN

J*, burgeoning baby lawyer, was today shaken by a particularly controversial aspect of the law. Seeking the support of a fellow first-year, equally as ploughed with outrage, they proceeded to whisper in what a bystander described as what can only be called ‘a misapplication of the concept of stage whispers, given that the participants were neither on stage nor particularly interesting’. Their animated repartee further inconvenienced a fellow Juris Doctor Candidate at Melbourne Law School (according to LinkedIn), who sedulously commandeers a rare non-communal study desk for the purposes of undertaking an empirical study into how many pins they can hear drop in the silence of the space. “My work here is ruined”, they mimed exasperatedly to our undercover reporter. “I must now restart this JD experiment for the third time to ensure reliability and accuracy of my data”, noting that “this frivolity is uncalled for” and “why can’t people just shut the [REDACTED] up?”. Bound by the inflexibility of the library’s peremptory norm of maintaining dangerously low decibels, many attempted, in futility, to convey their abject dismay and disgust over furtive looks and scowls directed at the haplessly verbose conversationalists.

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

NATHAN CHIN

The Easter break is near, and with it comes the lie you've told yourself: that you'll use it to catch up. Since you're going to procrastinate, maybe at the very least you can make it a bit more justifiable (in your head). It's not procrastination if it's inspiration. Surely, you'll study better overall if you're more inspired. As such, I present to you my list of the top ten legal dramas and films that every JD student absolutely must watch.
 
Author's Note: This isn't a list of best legal productions of all time. I know that there are plenty of amazing works that won't be here. Factors that I considered were: humour, popularity amongst the JD cohort, recency, my target audience, and my personal opinion.


​10. How to Get Away with Murder (2014–) This show does not deserve to be called a legal drama. The story occurs in a law school, with law  students and law teachers. But don’t be fooled, the only law school it resembles is probably what the average Legal Studies 3/4 student thinks law school is. Wes Gibson, all in his first day of law school, reaches the top of his class, gets recruited at a law firm, participates in a deposition and appears in court, all without doing any readings. The story is pretty interesting though.

    Verdict: Mindless thriller — 5/10

​(Contd...)

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

SHANE F

The Law School was once in the stone cloister
Where it was often said, 'the world's your oyster!'
But now they just tell 'em
We'll see you on Pelham
And the debt's enough to make your eyes moister.

Editor's note: Ok, we're sick of limericks. Anybody know how to write a haiku? Email mlsdeminimis@gmail.com

Issue 7, Semester 1, 2019

LIZZ KUIPER

Editor's note: We recommend you pick up a print copy to get the ~full benefit~ of doing this crossword in ye olde physical form.

See the answers by clicking 'Read More' below.​

Issue 6, Semester 1, 2019

TYSON HOLLOWAY-CLARKE

When I graduated in 2017 Uncle Wayne Atkinson was on the dias. He spoke about his people, the Yorta Yorta people, his research and his life’s work in fighting for land rights and education. That day I had all my regalia on, with the unique addition of a sash. It was striped in the red, yellow and black of the Aboriginal flag. Over the many hours of ceremony I could tell Uncle Wayne was growing weary, his eyes hanging low and following the shoes across the stage. It was quite a startle for him then when my dad Gavin broke with the explicitly stated instruction “Do not to cheer for your child”. Uncle Wayne spotted my larger than life black father in the crowd and swung around. He saw my sash, shining in our colours. He looked as though he was almost as happy as my Dad.

Issue 6, Semester 1, 2019
MICHAEL FRANZ

At some point during the next thousand words or so I’m going to start sounding like a crazy person, so I may as well rip that band-aid off right now.

Sometime in the near future a computer will be doing your job.

To be clear, what I mean by this is not just that increasing automation of services in the legal profession will attenuate demand in the graduate job market. I mean quite literally that computers will drive the human lawyer to extinction.  

Issue 6, Semester 1, 2019

TAH AH JIA

The room was blurry. A certain type of mischief splashed onto an empty canvas. Maybe it was the tears in my eyes that discarded my view, or just my mind playing tricks on me because I barely remember what happened to begin with—I don’t know. All I did know was that I was leaning against my wardrobe mirror, scrolling through my phone for no apparent reason, as my roommate sat across from me, crossed legged and weary on the top bunk of the bed. 

Issue 6, Semester 1, 2019

VARIOUS AUTHORS

There once was a class at ol’ Pelham Street
Where none of the students could find a spare seat
The teacher said with a shout
“What are you complaining about?
PPL is a subject best done on your feet!”
- Evan B

I attempted to heat my lunch
But level one hindered my munch
It’s hard to define
The length of the line
The window’s view adds sting to the punch
- Ben S

For our man Justice Kirby, our hearts all did throb
Til Chief Justice French did declare with a sob
“Another dissent!
My patience is spent!
Mike, I think you might just be bad at your job!”
- Edgar B

The Corkman in its lustre and gloss
Once stood proud from the law school across
Cowboys came one November
Walls and roof to dismember
​And now we just breathe in asbestos.
- Anon

Editor's note: Thanks all for your submissions! 

De Minimis supports healthy and robust debate in the comments section of the online publication.

​Currently, we allow anyone to comment (whether anonymous or not) as long as the comments do not breach our guidelines (in short, they should not be defamatory nor breach the University’s Student
Misconduct Policy).

However, there are certain limitations with the current commenting mechanism, and we would like your feedback on how it can be improved. Please fill out this [fully anonymous] survey to assist us in this process! We would greatly appreciate it. 

Issue 5, Semester 1, 2019

DEFINITELY A LAW STUDENT

Describing what it’s like to date someone who is NOT studying law is like trying to see air, which I certainly don’t do in the suffocating corners of level 3, the one pot plant besieged with the impossible task of churning out oxygen to our gasping demands. I struggle to find the words to describe how much I love you outside of syllogisms (You are great. I love everything great. Therefore, I must love you). Thankfully, many artists have done this labour of love (in so many ways). Let me direct you to the dulcet tones of Boney M’s outro in their beatific banger ‘Sunny’:

I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you

Issue 5, Semester 1, 2019

EDGAR BOX

Boats! Who doesn’t love a good boat? They’re such nifty little craft, useful for all kinds of tasks. Need to pillage some villages a ways up the coast? Boats! Need to colonise some far away lands for King and Country? Boats! Beloved husband of thirty years just die, and now that you’re approaching the twilight years, decide it’s time to rediscover life, love and yourself, in the form of a 30-day sex cruise around the Mediterranean? Boats!

This was obviously the thinking of the LSS committee, who last Wednesday hosted the first annual LSS boat party, ‘Spin Class Heroes’ themed (read: lots of sweatbands and sports bras). The evening began swimmingly. It’s hard to go wrong with $3.00 house vodka, and enough free pizza to trigger all the gluten allergies in Fitzroy. After a while however, the realisation began to sink in, that for all their nautical utility, it turns out that boats do have one drastic shortcoming. In the end they’re only as interesting as whatever you are doing on them.

Issue 5, Semester 1, 2019

EVA

It’s a Wednesday evening. A few hours ago, my friend helped me unload the last of my meagre possessions from their car onto the floor of my new bedroom. As far as bedrooms go, it isn’t much to speak of — small, cheap carpet, fluorescent lights, in a house of strangers. I’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight; hopefully I’ll have time to assemble my second-hand Ikea bed this weekend. Despite the less than homely environment, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief after the past twenty-two days.