Just can’t seem to muster the requisite energy to get into study again. It is the pointy end of semester, well getting close to. The last two weeks have been consumed with running the Junior and Senior moots which result in an average of 5 hours sleep a night, this is because I am at uni with the other two people running the moot until late in the evening putting scores in order and sending emails. Thursday was the last moot for the semester (thank goodness) after attending the after party where there were many free drinks to be had, went home and proceeded to make up at 4pm the following day.


Like a post by Marlowe, running comps can be an epic and thankless task. Students don’t really understand the amount of work and organisation that goes into running these events. They pull out last minute, whinge when they don’t win, fail to read the question and/or do not do the question justice. For the love of Lord Denning, if you are going to moot, read a book about how to moot at the minimum and save yourself the shame of looking like a tool.

Study has had to take a back seat to running the comps for the last few weeks and I am caught in that god awful ‘how the F*ck do I catch up?’ head space. The family is going to the middle of nowhere Australia (Dubbo) for my Nan’s 80th? birthday, I signed on to this 28 hour round trip exercise in boredom with the hope of taking nothing but IP law to read and catch up on. Yet still I think playing I-Spy with my 22 year old younger brother may win out..

By some strange stroke of luck at work I have been given a very, very interesting personal injury file to work on from the ground up. It involves expired time limits which could be extended, vicarious/non-delegable duty/ strict liability facts that not even the High Court can agree on in a similar fact scenario. The solicitor told Counsel about the facts and the response was to the effect of ‘forget it, you don’t really have an action’. I was pretty bummed out about that as I had spent a great deal of my weekend reading, researching and thinking about this case. I went to the solicitor and explained what I thought we could do and was met with a ‘you’re a clever little fu*cker aren’t you’. Made my week because I most definitely do not consider myself to be clever.

Being given ownership of this file confirms, for me, that I made the right decision in not applying for clerkships and staying where I am.

That ‘oh shit’ moment. Part of my job is putting together the briefs for Counsel, this only sounds interesting (for those not yet in the field). What it actually entails is hours of compiling, alphabetising and tabbing all the evidence to go to trial. Not in any way stimulating, however it does give you an understanding of what is going on. I was handed what I thought was the one matter and proceeded to spend 3 hours putting it together only to find out it was actually for two matters. That seriously messed up my day. However, even when I am having a crappy day at work I remind myself I could be peeling onions and mopping floors, perspective is a wonderful thing.

Well Hello! No, not I am not dead, just run off my feet. Between being one of three people running all the internal law student competitions for the year, working three days and study (with Surivelaw in the mix) I have very, very little time to do anything else! On the bright side I have handed in most of my written assessment for the semester giving me time to blog YAY! At one point I had 7,500 words due over a 6 day period. That reduced me to an over caffeinated blubbering mess... Work is still pretty amazing, recently I had to do an application in the District Court that even my managing solicitor was a bit nervous about but it came off nicely. It seems the ‘easy’ matters are always the ones that get very complicated and the ‘difficult’ matters turn out to be a dream. I have an excellent phone manner, after years of working in sales it is second nature to ask ‘how is your day shaping up’ to start a phone call and banter about how things are busy blah, blah, blah ensues. However this one Police Prosecutor took a bite out of my for doing just that with words to the effect of ‘how dare you ask you rude, arrogant person’ then continued to chew me out. By the end of the call I had her on more or less ‘good’ ground and asked ‘what would make your day better?’ apparently a coffee and chocolate would fix whatever her issue was. So, I found a legitimate reason to go up to the head quarters and lo and behold gave her a coffee and block of chocolate. It went down rather well, however there was a very real possibility I was going to end up wearing the coffee and waddling out with a block of chocolate up my bottom. Off to collate scores for the Senior Moot , YAY! – Obiter