Andrew Michaelson
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
If I were to guess I’d say about 4 in 5 law students would use laptops to take notes in class. These days you’ll often struggle to find anyone writing in a notebook at all. Now I’m not bemoaning the shunning of the classic ink and quill; no I see laptops as infinitely superior to writing hand notes – for one it makes checking Facebook a lot easier.
 
But I do have one issue with the spread of laptops throughout the Law School:
 
Loud-Typers. People who are so enthusiastic about noting something down they feel it’s necessary to hammer on the keyboard with the weight of a thousand suns every keystroke. In doing so, they echo the sound of a jackhammer to anyone sitting around them.
 
There’s at least one loud-typer in every class, and if you can’t immediately say who it is, then it’s probably you. I’ll accept that one never actively intends to be a loud-typer, no one could be that cruel. It’s something that happens by accident, an unconscious habit.
 
But it has to stop. Seriously. The thrashing and crashing of someone typing loudly is up there with some of the most annoying and distracting noises known to humanity (the others of course being someone chewing with their mouth open and the sound of chip-packets crinkling).
 
While writing this column I conducted a little experiment. I sat down at a table in the Level 3 study area, and bashed away at some Property notes as loud as a I could, to gage the reaction of those around me. Needless to say, the amount of poison in the death stares I received would down a dinosaur and it was starting to look like my keyboard wasn’t the only thing that was about to get bashed. So I know I’m not alone with this peeve.
 
So next time you’re taking some notes on a laptop, take note of how loud you’re hitting the keys - you’ll be doing yourself, and those sitting next to you a mighty big favour.
 
Andrew Michaelson indeed sees the irony in typing this column on a type-writer.
 
 
Andrew Michaelson

Nicholas Baum
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
As the justice system struggles to find and fund enough lawyers to protect those who need it most, law students struggle to find legal jobs. The incongruity of it would be funny, if it wasn’t putting at risk that terribly overused phrase, access to justice, and causing real harm in our society.
 
Late last year, Victoria Legal Aid announced unprecedented cuts to services, slashing the availability and extent of aid provided across family, criminal and civil matters. Judges Paul Grant, Terry Forrest,
Lex Lasry and Betty King have all publicly criticised the cuts. They have been driven by a shortage of funding at the federal and state level. Jane Lee, writing in The Age yesterday (‘What price justice?’, 21 April 2013), highlighted the problems this is causing both for the court system itself, and for the most vulnerable in our society.
 
As clerkship and graduate application season approaches, law students are all too aware of the shortage of legal jobs available. Of the 7,000-odd law graduates in Australia each year, some 64% cannot get a position practising law (Graduate Careers Australia survey, 2012). They are instead forced to pay for their own admission courses, or pursue alternate career paths. Student are trapped in a vicious cycle, unable to get a job without legal experience, and unable to get legal experience without a job.
 
This past March, The New York Times (NYT) profiled the nonprofit law firm set up by Arizona State University as a ‘teaching hospital for law school graduates’ (‘To Place Graduates, Law Schools Are Opening Firms’, Ethan Bronner, NYT, 7 March 2013). The brainchild of Arizona State’s dean, Douglas Sylvester, the program aims to address both the shortage of jobs and training opportunities for new law graduates, and the growing unmet legal needs of the poorest Americans.
 
The problem of job shortages is real, as is the problem of a shortage of lawyers available. Basic economics would suggest that these two phenomena would result in a growth of low-wage, low-cost private legal services, but this does not appear to be happening. Given the support that students in Australia receive through CSP programs, one suggestion would be to require those students to spend a year working for a legal aid or community legal service in order to be admitted to practice. Similar models are employed by medical schools that need doctors in rural areas. Another idea could be to adapt the recently launched LawPath online legal service.
 
Whatever the solution, policymakers at the state and federal level, as well as the legal professions and law schools, need to start looking outside the box. A surplus of law graduates and yet a shortage of lawyers, is an absurdity that cannot be allowed to continue.
 
Nicholas Baum

Adam Gleeson
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
It is 11:30 pm and I am standing in the middle of the Peninsula Ballroom listening to the saxophone sample made by famous by pop artist and recovering codeine addict Macklemore’s world-wide hit ‘Thrift Shop’. I glance around and I feel like I’ve been transported into Picasso’s Guernica. Bowties that have been cross-referenced against YouTube tutorials and double-checked by apathetic housemates now just resemble un-tied nooses. The MAC makeup that was once neatly applied is no longer so. Half-finished Crown Lager beer bottles fill the perimeter of the dance floor. They act as a warning against deciding to drink a beer whose target market is suburban football change rooms. Female attendees have already begun complaining about the state of their feet and fetishizing the moment they return home to remove their heels. A first year is perilously close to spilling the red wine they have managed to sneak past the ponytailed security attendant who is taking his responsible service of alcohol responsibilities very seriously. The DJ transitions into a questionable mash-up of Kelis’ playground rap hit Milkshake with 1999 one-hit-wonder ‘Better Off Alone’ by Eurodance act Alice Deejay. The dance-floor howls with approval. Apparently for many, the night is only beginning.
 
It is 9:00 pm and a jazz band has just finished playing their cover of Gotye’s well-received 2011 pop hit ‘Somebody I Used To Know’. I glance down at my main course of porterhouse beef and wonder if the rumours of an #OccupyPeninsula-type takeover due to the function centre’s refusal to also provide an entree meal will prove to be correct. I begin to climb the stairs to the communal bathroom and hear a table of first years complain that ever since the imitation Huxtaburgers at the Law Camp, they have been unable to even look at a menu that does not contain the words ‘grass-fed’ or ‘slowcooked’. I make a mental note to tell superchef John Azzopardi. Hopefully this will get me an invitation to one of his infamous six-course dinner parties. A person drying his hands in the bathroom is urging a friend to give his number instead of his own to any girl he meets tonight. Apparently it will be funny. The friend is not in an agreeable mood. It is every man for himself tonight. I return to my table and am nearly caught in the cross fire of bread rolls being tossed around the ballroom. I wonder what time dessert will be served.
 
It is 2:30 am and I am sitting in the La Di Da nightclub smoking area and watching students who I did not realise maintained an existence outside of the Level 3 study area having their night ended by tired bouncers. Some fight their way to return into to the nightclub and the comforting warmth of 300 other students putting their hands up like they got a $20 bill. They are not yet ready to accept the honest truth of a Pie Face sausage roll and a dull Friday headache. Instead, they are removed even more unceremoniously the second time by the tired bouncers. The bouncers clearly do not realise who these students are or where they clerked.
 
It is 7:30 pm and I have just departed a taxi and begun to walk into the wind tunnel that is the Docklands Central Pier. I notice the artificial turf that is acting as a de-facto red carpet for keen law students entering onto a road to perdition. It’s time for Law Ball.
 
Adam Gleeson

​Peter Botros
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)

Equity Uncle
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
Dear Equity Uncle,
 
I am discouraged about law school. The work itself is not the problem, any more than it is for others. The reading and the writing, look, I’m literate. However, I feel stupid all the time. In class, other people ask good questions and I ask dumb ones. When I study with others, they’ve come up with great insights and I’m looking at a blank page. Good marks feel like nothing and bad ones feel like my blackened charcoal heart is disintegrating. I feel like I should come up with a concise question that gets to the core of the matter, but I can’t. Please help.
 
Sincerely,
 
Darkest Before the Dawn, I Hope
 
Dear Darkest Before the Dawn,
 
It’s my first week answering these questions and I get this? Being concise certainly isn’t your thing, and equity will not allow verbosity. Equity frowns upon verbiage. Equity abhors the prolix.
 
Clearly you have a problem with self-expression, but there’s no need to equate this with stupidity. Equity smiles upon the anxious. Equity adores the introvert.
 
So my first piece of advice in these pages is this: relax. Breathe deeply. Think slowly. Don’t be afraid to express yourself, or to hold back. Because really, and this is the important bit, nobody cares how you study. Or, you could become a dentist…
 
Equity Uncle
 
Postscript: Equity also abhors the dentist.
 
Equity Uncle

Christine Todd
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
Seven Seeds – 114 Berkeley St., Carlton.
 
A regular haunt for law students and legal academics alike, Seven Seeds is an absolute must-try if you’re new to the JD. Tucked away down an unassuming laneway opposite the law building, this converted warehouse café will win you over immediately with its electrifying buzz and atmospheric coffee aroma. The staff are extremely well versed in their coffee, and are happy to explain their speciality roasted blends and alternatives to espresso. Better yet, these guys LOVE their coffee. If they could they would drive it up to a secluded hilltop, set the mood with some wine and an 80s saxophone solo, and have their way with it.
 
One of the few downsides of Seven Seeds may indeed be its popularity. While roomed in a spacious converted warehouse, you’d be hard-pressed to actually find a table here. There are also often long queues to order, which can get really tedious if you’ve arrived for class a dishevelled, slightly disorientated mess and require a shot of caffeine to help you operate the MLS lifts. Arrive early to caffeinate before your 9 am, or just order a cup and enjoy in class. Many a student have I befriended because of my inexplicable lack of resistance to this saintly beverage, which they happen to be cradling.
 
SCORE: 4.5/5 coffee beans.
 
Christine Todd

Tessa Sidnam
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
Given the prevalence of diet-inducing (th)inspirational quotes on the internet such as ‘eat fashion, not food’, De Minimis’ (un)official food column is this week about law ball fash 2013.
 
But first, a quick word about the food. As Kanye West once said, ‘pass the refreshments, a cool, cool beverage’. And although a certain DM columnist indulged in the free-flow of drinks prior to the main course of the evening, it was pretty clear that the law ball’s food far exceeded the standard set by this year’s camp food. Sorry John.
 
Sartorially speaking, the first thing we noticed was the sheer number of guys in suits.
 
As for the girls, sequins were the theme of the evening. Inspiration had clearly been drawn from the very pregnant Kim Kardashian’s Instagram account, and rumour has it that the Hashtag Police gave up trying to censor the horrific hashtagging that occurred over the course of the night. Notable examples include #socute, #besties, #mygirls, #ballbabes, and #sogladwechosenottodothetrustsexam-tomorrow.
 
If De Minimis had to give an award for the best-dressed student body member at this year’s event, the winner would have to be first-year Anthony Pitruzzello, partially because it’s his birthday today (happy bday, boy!), and partially because of this accidental free-verse he delivered the night before the ball (so yes this is biased):
 
I’ve narrowed it down to three ties
 
Givenchy, YSL and random
 
Suits down to bespoke and Hugo
 
What time’s this f*cking ball start anyway?
 
I want some f*cking Brownes, though
 
Or some handmade Ballys
 
I don’t know what shirt to wear
 
This is a nightmare
 
Pitruzzello ended up wearing a Givenchy tie that no one really noticed because he was wearing a scarf. Who wears a scarf to law ball? This guy, and last year’s LSS president Anthony Freeman.

Tessa Sidnam