Agony Aunt
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
Dear Agony Uncle,
 
In one of my classes, there is a girl who types so violently that the entire desk row shakes when she is taking notes, or more frequently, when she is on facebook chat. Even when I manage to avoid sitting in the same row, the typing is so loud I can’t pay attention and it’s driving me insane. What can I do to make her stop?
 
In Need of Quiet
 
Dear in Need of Quiet
 
I’m not sure whether to prescribe you a psychologist or a seismologist. It would seem that your colleague and would be earthquake has made it her business to become a rather bothersome addition to your class. Indeed, tectonic shifting and persistent shaking have been proven to be a distracting and dangerous obstacle to effective learning. It is clear that measures must be taken, although the severity of the problem is debatable. It is obvious that certain ‘mature resolutions’ such as: communication of the issue, moving to a far-away desk or even ‘spilling’ coffee all over her keyboard have been exhausted and you are coming to this forum for more esoteric ideas.
 
Her indiscretion towards your desire to concentrate in class calls for a suitable method of punishment. Her actions, while almost assuredly unintentional, are petty; and so should be your revenge. Consider bringing your own computer to class next time, and instead of matching her loud typing, why not attempt to be louder? Perhaps once she has been shown the true power of tremor-inducing keystrokes, she will see the error of her ways.
 
If that solution is not satisfactory why not simply remove her hands? Nothing ruins a Facebook conversation faster than the garbled messages, frustratingly typed out with two fingerless stumps.
 
Sincerely Uncle Cyril
 
Agony Aunt

Nicholas Baum
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
The opening hours are extended sig-
 
Access to Melbourne Law School’s facilities needs to change to reflect the law student community of 2013.
 
Currently, access to the building and library is severely limited – opening too late in the morning, and closing too early in the evening. The opening hours, and especially the weekend hours, do not adequately reflect the needs of a diverse student body.
 
Students in 2013 are not just law students. They are employees, parents and carers, and volunteers, to name a few examples. The law school can no longer operate under this myth. A policy that denies students a place to study when they can is not fair on those students that have other commitments. It is particularly unfair to those students who do not have an alternative place to study effectively.
 
The opening hours are extended significantly during swotvac, but this only exacerbates and encourages cramming. If faculty is serious about wanting students to spread their workload over the semester, and not simply trying to learn the entire course in the weeks before the exams, then the building’s opening hours should reflect this.
 
Students who are members of student societies and journals are given extended access to these facilities. Those groups need that flexible access to run their organisations. But their needs are no more important than those students who have other extracurricular commitments. Twenty-four hour swipe-card access should be extended to all law students.
 
In the last two years, the number of students studying in the JD has increased by over 300 students. This growth has not been matched by expanded study space. Put simply, there is not enough desk space in the level three area, nor in the building as a whole. Whether it is in the library or in other parts of the building, more space needs to be set aside dedicated for law students.
 
Faculty is not the only student service provider who is failing to keep up with increased student numbers. The Law Students’ Society also needs to lift its game in this regard. Two barbeques do not cook sausages quickly enough to hold a barbeque for all of law school. More large lockers need to be available, to cater for the needs of those students that cannot easily travel between home and university and do not have alternative storage spaces. And more spaces need to be opened up in student competitions, rather students simply being waitlisted.
 
Nicholas Baum 

Christine Todd
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
Briscola Café – This place has always been a personal favourite, simply because the staff are so friendly and personable. It’s recently undergone an internal refurbishment, and now boasts a larger indoor seating area, which makes grabbing lunch with a classmate slightly less intimate.
 
While their baristas have excellent coffee-making skills (Porta Via, take note), their standard blend can be a tad boring flavour-wise. But the coffee is generally strong, and the food fresh and reasonably priced. Their homemade soups during the cold winter months are a guaranteed pick-me-up for the inevitable cold you’re going to catch from the classmates you essentially live with in the student study area.
 
SCORE: 3/5 coffee beans.
 
Christine Todd

Andrew Michaelson
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
If you’re a motorist, chances are you’ve at some stage thrown all caution, reason and sanity to the wind and attempted to park at the Law School.
 
For those of you unaware, trying to park at University is like trying to clone a dinosaur; it’s inevitably costly, damn near impossible and you really shouldn’t be trying to do it in the first place.
 
The problem is that all the good, slightly affordable spots – the cheap 4-hour ones on either side of University Square – are taken 99.99% of the time. Either the people who get those spots arrive at 5 am, or they parked there once in 2005 and never left. To add insult to injury, these rows of spaces are sprinkled with superfluous trees, which really only serve the purpose of denying us a few more precious spots, and to tease us by fooling us into thinking there’s a spot available as we drive up the road.
 
If you don’t manage to get one of these 4-hour spots, you’ve no choice but to dance with the 2-hour zones. To attempt to park in one of these spots is to court a cruel mistress: she’s clingy, expecting to see you literally every 2-hours, expensive and is always getting ogled by other guys.
 
Perhaps this is part of the University’s coy strategy to try and encourage students to use public transport and minimize our carbon footprint, or just macabre “survival of the earliest” game they’re playing. Either way, the circumstances aren’t exactly desirable.
 
So here’s my handy-dandy how to guide for parking at the Law School.
 
Step 1. Don’t.
 
And you’re done! Congratulations.
 
Andrew Michaelson is looking for buyers for his orange Fiat Punto.
 
Andrew Michaelson

Dean Edwards
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
This past summer, three MLS students travelled to Israel for a unique experience in the study of law.
 
Third-year Bronwen Ewens, second-year Louise McNeil and I took part in the summer course Mishpatim: Israeli and International Law, which ran for most of January 2013 at Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem.
 
Every year several MLS students join other Australian law students to undertake the Mishpatim course, which comprises a broad overview of Israeli domestic law and the state’s interplay with international law.
 
This year, 17 students in all participated, with Dr Daniel Ohana of Hebrew University’s law faculty, a specialist in criminal law, leading the class instruction. Ohana and a number of visiting academics and guest lecturers provided the bulk of learning, in addition to several field trips to the Israeli Supreme Court, the religious women’s legal service Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem.
 
In their spare time, students took advantage of their four-day class weeks to organise outings in Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank. Students had the opportunity to see firsthand the diverse and often confronting reality on the ground in a country less than half the size of Tasmania.
 
The stunning beauty of the land and its cities contrasted with the dire measures taken by a state racked by an on-going conflict, now simmering, with the occupied territories. For a student interested in current affairs and the relationship of power and law in domestic and international contexts, the Mishpatim course offers an unparalleled opportunity to study in a locale deeply important to histories past and in the making.
 
With such a tight-knit group of fellow students, the course also provides a chance to meet other highly motivated and curious minds and to discover a region and society charged with frustrating conflicts, populated by fascinating and friendly people, with an almost inexhaustible list of sites to explore.
 
Applications for the 2014 summer course open soon and close in October 2013. More information is available from the Australian Friends of the Hebrew University (http://www.austfhu.org.au/mishpatim.html), who coordinate the Mishpatim program with Hebrew University and also provide financial assistance to students in need.
 
Dean Edwards

Tessa Sidnam
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
Last issue, De Minimis relayed the overall success of the LSS camp food. Until camp, it had been unfathomable that any law school-related food could match that of a Michelin dining experience. Wednesday’s first LSS barbeque of the year was proof again that Melbourne Law School is establishing itself as a trailblazer in the law school food industry.
 
What is an LSS BBQ? Last year, the New Yorker ran an article on the growing underground food movement. The article was premised on the rise of young, undercapitalized food-fanatics hosting dinners to share their gastronomic experimentation and create a food experience for the diners. LSS BBQs are aimed at serving as above- ground expressions of the underground movement. Culinary delights are provided on the lawn in the hope that this will facilitate dynamic dialogue between the committee and the law student body. Conversations about law school, elitism, and other appropriate topics are encouraged through the provision of sausies and dranks.
 
Wednesday’s turnout was certainly illustrative of the law school student body’s dramatic increase in size since last year. “I think there were like, 50 people in the year above,” a factually-optimistic third year mentioned offhandedly. “Now that there are 350 first years in the building, I can’t decide whether I’ll bother to show up to BBQs anymore. A sausage isn’t really worth more than a five minute wait, you know.” Some were comparing the crowd to White Night, saying that the lawn felt like a smaller version of the audience that had gathered at Flinders Street Station to see the Cat Empire perform at 2 am during Melbourne’s attempt to host an evening of culture last month.
 
“I wasn’t sure if I was lining up for a sausage or a new Skyrim game,” one student confessed.
 
Activities Directors ‘Janeo & Frawley’ took a minimalist approach to the sausages by cooking them straight out of the packet. This really allowed the students to enjoy and appreciate the inherent flavours of the meat. “You know something is truly good when you don’t have to tamper with it to make others appreciate it,” observed a kid who lined up for seconds.
 
It is not clear what type of meat the sausages contained.
 
While the free food was clearly the highlight of the week for some of Melbourne Law School’s Centrelink-dependent students, the live music also served as a pleasant break from the daily
(Level 3) grind. Beyoncé flew down from the United States to do an hour-long show for the students, making for three important performances by her within the space of two months (Obama’s in-
auguration, the Superbowl, and the LSS BBQ). She later commented that good things come in threes, leading to speculation regarding the law school’s recent reluctance to allow students to complete the JD in less than three years.
 
Tessa Sidnam 

Haram Kwon
Volume 3, Issue 3, (Originally Published on Monday 18th March 2013)
 
MLS Associate Dean Elise Bant held meetings last Tuesday and Friday to discuss the potential consequences of students’ choosing to accelerate their course of study.
 
The meetings’ full content is available in the Course Acceleration Guidelines, and the Statement on Duration of Legal Studies (available online at http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/jd/course-and-sub-jects/the-course/course-acceleration-important-information/).
 
In a nutshell, Bant stressed three main points: there is an increase in requests for clarification of an accelerated degree’s validity from employers and admission and scholarship bodies; the Council for Legal Education (COLE) has adopted the recommendation “that applicants for admission be required to have completed an accredited course of three years or the ‘equivalent’ of a three year course”; and that approval must be obtained before your degree can be accelerated.
 
The Guidelines state that Bant’s approval has always been required when overloading within a semester, and that load-spreading (taking winter and summer intensives) does not reduce duration of the degree overall, “in most cases.”
 
While this may be true, there are also students who choose to take winter and summer intensives without reducing the number of subjects taken during the semester, which results in an accelerated degree. This third scenario has not previously been subjected to any approval process. “I never gained, nor was told that I was required to gain approval,” said one student who wished to remain anonymous and has completed an accelerated JD in two years by taking winter and summer subjects.
 
There have been reassurances that the Acceleration Approval Form will serve only as additional paperwork reinforcing the fact that the JD is an accredited three-year degree that can be accelerated. The need to submit the form when applying for admission is presumed to be unlikely, according to the MLS administration.
 
The administration furthermore recommends students apply for approval after their first semester of study. In addition, students at a later stage of their already accelerated degrees are encouraged to do likewise, raising questions as to how effective the form will be in those cases where the ‘approval’ comes after the fact of their degree’s acceleration.
 
Haram Kwon is reporting from London, where she is currently De Minimis’ full-time Europe Correspondent and, in her spare time, studying at CTLS.
 
Haram Kwon