The Lego Mirror - LawSchool

My free software toolkit for school, redux

2026-08-11T03:00:00+00:00

Previously: 2018

I've tried my best to use only free software as part of going back to school, and for the most part I've been pretty successful.

I picked up a new Framework 13 right before school started. I appreciate having USB-C charging options on both sides and being able to move the HDMI port to either side depending on the configuration of the room.

Really I just like the orange color scheme I picked out for myself.

I installed Fedora Silverblue on it; I'm a really big fan of the whole atomic OS concept, it works quite well. I've been able to use Flatpaks for nearly everything.

Firefox: not much to say here, it just works.

LibreOffice: I take all my notes in LibreOffice, which is good enough as it's mostly just bullet points and a few tables here and there. All of our writing assignments are required to be submitted in .docx format, so my final step on every assignment is to convert my .odt to Word format. I think, but am not actually sure, Word may have better support for formatting and managing citations than LibreOffice. Its on my todo list to see what it would extra functionality writing an extension would give me.

Signal: our cohort's main group chat is in Signal, and so is my study group's. It wasn't even a thing I had to push for, it was the default that others chose! The only downside is that a number of people have set their profile name to a single letter or gibberish, so I've slowly had to set nicknames for everyone.

draw.io: I really like using draw.io to make a diagram version of my study guide, and my friends were pretty impressed with how nice they looked. During my first semester I used the website, but I've now switched to the offline Electron version.

Nextcloud: I store all of my school work in a self-hosted Nextcloud instance. I tried using the flatpak version of the desktop client but it had enough issues that I went back to the RPM version, which integrates with Nautilus much better.

Kiwix: one of my professors had a rule that if we were going to use our laptops, we had to be offline. I found myself wanting access to a dictionary to look up latin and archaic terms, so I downloaded the latest ZIM of English Wiktionary and used Kiwix to access it in class while staying offline.

KeePassXC: for reasons that make zero sense, our login sessions on Brightspace (LMS) and other CUNY websites expire after an hour, which is far too short, so you have to keep logging in, over and over again. It would be pretty hard to design a system to get people to hate 2FA more than this one. KeePassXC (and other password managers to be clear) lets me store a TOTP seed in the database and generate codes. So logging in becomes a dance of: Ctrl+B (copy username), Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Tab, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+C (copy password), Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Enter, Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+T (copy TOTP), Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Enter.

Thunderbird is unfortunately not on this list because my school uses Outlook and they restrict OAuth access so I can't get it to work. Using webmail is actually awful, I can't believe that people have to deal with this for all their other email.

First year of law school is in the books

2026-08-02T07:40:00+00:00

CUNY Law during the infamous blizzard.

Previously: Fall 2025, Spring 2026

It's official, I've now finished my first year of law school. As a part-time student, we were required to take torts and another lawyering seminar over the summer to wrap up the 1L curriculum.

Tort law allows people to pursue claims against others for causing harm in a civil manner. We only covered a few select torts: battery, assault, false imprisonment, and then neglience.

My professor's specialty/focus is claims where kids are harmed, so she primarily focused on examples involving kids. In our very first torts class, she showed us body cam footage of cops brutally arresting elementary school students (false imprisonment!); it was incredibly effective at sharing an understanding of how real people are harmed in the real world as opposed to an abstract, educational topic.

I'm not sharing a graphical study guide like I've done previously because I didn't end up creating one this semester. Both of our exams were open book, so I just used my notes and the resources our professor gave us.

Lawyering seminar was a continuation of last semester's simulation of child neglect, except this time the mother was being accused of also neglecting the younger sibling. We learned about educational neglect, failure to protect, and Family Court Act § 1028, which is the procedure to demand return of a child after Children's Services removes them.

In New York, every child gets their own attorney during family court procedings (siblings might share an attorney if appropriate). Close to two decades ago, the court system moved from a "law guardian" role, in which you're an agent of the court, to "attorney for child", in which you are really the child's lawyer, representing them as a client.

But we ended up serving as an attorney for a child who didn't want to go home (yet)! Between that and torts, it was a pretty intense semester; my friend dubbed it "the summer of child abuse".

We got Wednesdays off, which was nice! Unfortunately between the Knicks, the World Cup, and some bad weather, we had a number of remote classes, which I can't stand.

Next semester will be Civil Procedure, Evidence (Fourth Amendment), and drumroll Critical Race Theory. Also I'll be a Staff Editor on the CUNY Law Review.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to reflect on finishing one year by...interviewing myself. But really, these tend to be the questions everyone asks me (I don't mind!), so you can think of it as a FAQ.

What do you want to do with your law degree?

No idea. Definitely not anything family court related (see above regarding the summer of child abuse).

Really?

Really. I think I'd be interested in doing a number of things, like First Amendment free speech/expression/press, or Fourth Amendment anti-surveillance and privacy, or something tech-adjacent.

Lately something around drafting or reviewing legislation seems interesting. But I don't think I've found just exactly what I want to do yet.

Also, as you might have heard, the rule of law in the U.S. is uhhh, going through some struggle lately. So we'll see what the law is even like by the time I graduate.

Is law school hard?

It's certainly harder than any other class I've taken before, but I suppose that's to be expected for a graduate program. I find the hardest part to be balancing my time.

Normally I sign off work at 5pm sharp, eat a quick meal, start class at 6:15, and then we go until 9 or 10. Then after I get home, a bit more food and prep for the next day. Weekends are for reading for the upcoming week and whatever other homework we have.

Hanging out with friends is limited to whenever there's a holiday or by some miracle, a light reading week.

It definitely requires having a good support system; I couldn't have done it without my family and girlfriend helping me out. Whether they wanted to or not, they too learned some law school stuff when I regurgitated it to them as part of my exam prep.

Do you enjoy it?

Except for when it's exam time, absolutely. I've been interested in the law for a while, so actually learning the subtle details feels very enriching because you realize how little you knew beforehand!

Plus I just like learning. To that end, this is probably the most I've ever read in my life.

Best part is definitely the friends I've made. I think our study group is the best one (I'm being 100% objective here), and it was because we mostly happened to sit in the same row during the first week.

What's the most interesting thing you've learned so far?

I think criminal law has been the most fascinating to me, just because we all have some basic understanding of what crimes are and what's illegal, but getting to know the legal framework that underpins it all really taught me that I actually had a very poor understanding of what a crime was! To some extent this is largely academic, at the end of the day what really matters is whether the jury votes to convict.

We also learned a number of defenses to crimes, which is probably a good thing to know! My favorite is the Cheek defense, which can be used if you intentionally screw up your taxes, as long as you had a "good-faith belief" that you were doing the right thing.

However, now that you've learned about the Cheek defense, you can't plan to use it since it would no longer be a good-faith belief. You're welcome.

Where do you get boba from?

I will do a proper review eventually, but Teazzi is right across the street from the CUNY Law campus, it's quite good. The only downside is that the boba often clumps together, which means that you need to suck real hard to get the boba out, which isn't something you can quietly do in class!

During our first-ever study group session, I took the group to Teazzi and we all got boba and they said they enjoyed it. The next day before class I walk in to see my now-best friend is, entirely of her own volition, sitting there drinking boba. One of my proudest moments.

Second semester of law school: done

2026-06-08T22:55:00+00:00

Previously: Fall 2025

I finished my second semester of law school a few weeks ago, only seven more semesters to go! I'm not yet technically done with my first year since we're required to take two summer classes this year (future summers we'll have off).

This past semester was contracts (officially "Law and the Market Economy"), legal research, and another lawyering seminar. Contracts was our only doctrinal class, and I managed to rack up 72 pages of notes.

There's a lot that goes into contract law!! It depends whether you're contracting over goods or services, and then if there's some provision of law you don't like, you can just override it in the contract, except for the ones you can't.

It was definitely overwhelming at the end, here's my graphical study guide:

Probably best viewed in a separate tab.

Notably this is quite incomplete, it's missing the entire seventh question of contracts ("When do people not party to a contract have contract law rights or contract law duties?") because I ran out of time to finish it. I also didn't include browsewrap, clickwrap, etc.

Legal research was easily my favorite class because I enjoy looking up things and perusing different sources to evaluate them, but gosh, in no just and fair world should it be legal for Westlaw and Lexis and all the other providers to lock up and put a paywall in front of the basic legal information that essentially every lawyer needs to be able to work.

Not that I ever had any doubt in what Aaron Swartz, Carl Malamud, et al. were fighting against, but I definitely have a much greater appreciation for it now that I've been on the inside of Westlaw and HeinOnline and seen what treasures of knowledge they've locked up. And how crucial they are to be able to practice law effectively.

Our lawyering seminar revolved around a hypothetical case in which a child is diagnosed with a psychiatric condition and the mother refuses to treat it, with the question being whether the mother has neglected the child. I enjoyed it more than last semester's simulation because this time we explicitly took sides — I represented ACS, arguing that she had neglected her child — and got to write persuasive briefs, followed by oral arguments on a motion to dismiss.

Summer term is torts (i.e. private right of action) and another lawyering seminar.

Exclusive: Justice Sotomayor on AI, taxes and more

2026-03-14T02:30:00+00:00

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited CUNY Law earlier today, for an event titled “My time as a law student.” Two students, one full-time and one part-time, asked her questions submitted by other students.

My reporting may read as quite critical of her. Broadly, I don’t think Supreme Court justices get anywhere near an appropriate amount of criticism and scrutiny compared to the immense power they all wield, even for the “liberal” justices in the minority.

With that in mind, I think it’s worth starting with something that most media organizations (unless you’re Ken Klippenstein) shy away from: her health. No video recording was allowed, so you’ll have to rely on my written descriptions.

Sotomayor will turn 72 in a few months. In the CUNY Law auditorium, there are three steps to get on or off the stage. There is no handrail; every time she went up or down, she needed two people to hold her.

To her credit, she didn’t just stay seated on the stage, she slowly walked through the crowd while talking, regularly taking breaks by leaning on a desk while posing for photos with students.

Sotomayor stated early on that because she can multitask, it was fine for the students to read the question out loud while she was posing for photographs. She initially seemed quick on her feet but made some factual mistakes throughout that surprised me.

The first question was about what law school classes she’d recommend us students to take. She started off with “as many legal writing classes as [we] could take.”

She said that if we can’t explain ourselves in writing, we’ll never succeed at anything in life, regardless of the profession. “The ability to explain yourself in writing is what will get you heard.”

The second skill she said to develop is public speaking, and to find opportunities for it, even if law schools don’t offer it as a class.

She prefaced her third critical skill as something that didn’t exist when she was in law school: AI.

“AI may be the revolutionary technology of your century”, Sotomayor said. “It is going to absolutely alter every single profession in the world.”

A few days ago she had dinner with her former law clerks, she said one told her that they laid off half of their paralegals because of AI. Another clerk told her that all their associates use AI to help draft their briefs.

Sotomayor explicitly described it as “not cheating” and that the skill to learn is how to use it “smartly and understanding its strength and limitations.”

After sharing an anecdote about how her most recent mammogram was read by AI and apparently not a human, she put it even more bluntly.

“You should not be graduating without taking an AI course,” Sotomayor said.

After those three “critical skills” (writing, public speaking and AI), she said that aside from our normal doctrinal classes of contracts and constitutional laws, we should take classes outside what we plan to practice to gain a broad understanding of the profession.

Sotomayor explained that she took an estates class and now all of her relatives, despite her telling them to consult a lawyer, ask her for help with their wills. She also took a tax class, because taxes are relevant to everything — even civil rights.

“Where do the rich get all their money to oppose civil rights?” she asked. It wasn’t clear to me if she was implying support for taxing the rich.

The next question was from a classmate of mine who was formerly incarcerated, asking about the impact and role of lawyers who were formerly incarcerated.

Sotomayor started by acknowledging that lawyers who were formerly incarcerated have made great law clerks, but didn’t know if any had ever been a clerk to a Supreme Court justice. Some of her former district court and circuit court colleagues had hired former inmates as clerks, but apparently she has never done so.

She noted that having relevant lived experience makes you better at what you’re doing, and that type of diversity was just as important as racial or ethnic diversity.

“When I’m asked what’s the greatest flaw on the Supreme Court today, I could name many things,” Sotomayor said. “But the one that stands out to me is our bench’s lack of depth in lived experience.”

No sitting justice has had civil rights experience since Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she said. Odd for her to ignore Clarence Thomas, who briefly worked in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights before running the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Then she incorrectly stated that no current justice has criminal defense experience, which was shocking given that one of the things Ketanji Brown Jackson is best known for is being the first federal public defender to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Relevant to today, she said none of the nine justices have experience with immigration law. She recommended students not try to just follow what past justices have a history of doing, but rather pursuing whatever interests them, as the standards for picking justices will constantly change.

Next question: what advice do you have for new lawyers going into the profession? She said that despite it being a totally new thing, not to be scared.

Sotomayor started her legal career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. After failing to obtain convictions in two cases that she felt she should have, she discussed it with her supervisor (or possibly mentor), who explained to her that she couldn’t just let the evidence stand on its own, and that she needed to turn the facts into feelings that would change the jury’s mind.

After that, Sotomayor said she never lost another case (with the exception of a hung jury).

“The most powerful weapons we have as lawyers are words,” she said. “Words can kill … Words can build courage in a way that nothing else can. Words can exceedingly powerful things.”

Sotomayor grew up in the projects in the Bronx and worked her way up to attend both Princeton (undergrad) and Yale (law school). The next question asked about her journey in doing so, and how she navigates being in elite institutions.

She started by noting that her poverty was different than what Thomas endured, as he had grown up in the south where he suffered a more “extreme” type of persecution. And that immigrants come here having faced even worse poverty and situations than what she went through.

At Princeton she said she didn’t understand the opportunities she was missing out on, and wished that she had gone to the theater or attended free concerts that her classmates were going to.

Sotomayor said that everyone wanting to become a lawyer should have the goal of bettering the world we all live in. And that we should not to aim to destroy their world (i.e. do not destroy “elite institutions”) but instead meld them with the world we came from.

The next student question was about how lately the law feels oppressive and supporting those in power rather than protecting the vulnerable.

“If your goal to become a lawyer is to win every case, then leave law school,” Sotomayor immediately answered. “You are a lawyer to fight for lost causes. You will lose cases,” she said, in stark contrast to her earlier remarks about her never losing a case again.

She said these people need a voice, they need a champion, someone who will stand by them even when it seems hopeless.

But then she attacked the underlying premise of the question, which is that in fact the law has rarely been a reliable tool for positive social change, and for most of history it has been oppressive — I agree!

Dred Scott lost every state and federal case he filed, including in the Supreme Court, she said, reiterating its place in the anticanon as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever.

She continued, emphasizing that it was only through fighting the Civil War was Dred Scott able to regain his citizenship. Sotomayor recited most of the Citizenship Clause, which is currently under attack by Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship and in front of the Court. (She misattributed it to the 13th Amendment instead of the 14th.)

Then it was another hundred years until Brown v. Board of Education, which itself was one of the few success stories amongst many, many failed civil rights cases that were filed at the time, she said.

But she said she still believes in the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote about how the arc of the universe bends towards justice.

A good friend of mine was able to snag the last question, asking about what advice she’d give to law students who followed non-traditional paths and are starting their legal careers later in life.

Sotomayor said to never be afraid of saying “I don’t know.” She said that even in conference, if she doesn’t understand something, she’ll ask someone to explain it.

It’s not stupid to not know something, she said, rather it would be stupid to not know something and then not say that you didn’t know! She encouraged everyone to ask professors questions whenever they don’t follow something in class or have doubts.

Personally I really appreciated the event, Supreme Court justices can often feel like larger than life figures, so it’s nice to get the opportunity to see and hear from one in person. I’m glad CUNY Law is able to attract an interesting set of speakers for us to engage with.

One semester of law school done

2025-12-18T05:45:00+00:00

I just finished my first semester of law school Tuesday evening...only eight more to go! People say that the first year of law school is the worst, and I certainly hope that's true.

I don't think I've ever had so much information dumped into my brain in such a short period of time. In my Liberty, Equality and Due Process (LEDP) class about the Fourteenth Amendment, I took 109 pages of notes, and for Criminal Law, 54 pages.

As a very very condensed version of what I learned, here are the study guides I made for both classes:

Probably best viewed in a separate tab.

Also best viewed in a separate tab.

I cannot yet vouch for the accuracy contained on those guides yet as I haven't gotten my grades back yet, but I think they're mostly correct!

Next semester is contracts, which'll probably be immediately practically useful, and legal research, which I'm really looking forward to. I now have access to Westlaw, which is both amazing in how rich the content and interface is...and terrible how it's all locked in a commercial, private database.

A small change in plans

2025-07-04T22:45:00+00:00

A small change in plans: I'm starting law school in the fall. I'll be attending the CUNY School of Law right here in Queens to become a public interest-focused lawyer.

I plan to continue working full time at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and go to school in the evenings, part time. And yes, law school is something I have always wanted to attend.

Going forwards you'll probably see me switch up the standard disclaimer to something like IANALY (I Am Not A Lawyer Yet).