Advice to New Law Students

As Ben Stone, one of my favorite TV lawyers, once said, “All clichés are true.” One is particularly true in law school — don’t miss the forest for the trees. Our classes and the studying that accompanies them are certainly the most important thing we have going. This is a school, and we are here to learn to be lawyers. However, classes are not the only way we learn that. If you let your classes become your trees, you will miss the forest that is Marquette Law School, which, if you let it (and you should), will teach you more than just the law. I was prepared to torture the law-school-as-forest comparison into a severely strained metaphor involving trees, plants, trails, streams, and woodland animals, but I’ll spare you. Instead, I’d like to offer some advice on making the most of your law school experience.

Get wired in. If you have a smartphone, put your MU email on it. If not, get in the habit of checking it regularly. Law school is like a job, and you don’t want to miss a memo from the boss. I can’t count how many times I answered, “Where did you hear that?” with, “It was in our email.” Don’t find out your class was cancelled by being one of three people sitting alone in the classroom for fifteen minutes. Don’t find out about free food by watching the last of it parade by in the hands of your email-checking classmates. Definitely don’t find out the parking garage is closed for the day by rolling up to the FULL sign, fifteen minutes before class starts. That last one really hurts.

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Seventh Circuit Weighs in on Aggravated Identity Theft Sentencing

The aggravated identity theft statute (18 U.S.C. §1028A) specifies a sentence of two years — no more, no less — for each violation.  So, when a defendant is convicted of multiple violations of the statute, should the two-year sentences be imposed concurrently or consecutively?  Today, in United States v. Dooley (No. 11-2256), the Seventh Circuit recognized that the sentencing judge has discretion in making the decision, but held that the judge must consider the factors set forth in U.S.S.G. §5G1.2 Application Note 2(B).

Dooley was convicted in three separate counts of violating §1028A, leaving the judge to choose among three sentencing options: 24 months, 48 months, or 72 months.  (I leave out the effect of Dooley’s conviction of various other offenses, which did not play a significant role in the Seventh Circuit’s analysis.)  In selecting the 72-month option, the judge focused on the need to avoid disparities relative to another defendant.  However, the judge did not mention the Note 2(B) factors.  This, the Seventh Circuit held, was plain error.  

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Here’s My Invite, so Friend Me, Maybe? Changing Notions of Privacy in Social Media

I first want to take a moment to thank the Marquette Law School Blog editorial faculty for inviting me to be the alumni blogger this month. I have enjoyed the content the MULS blog has offered since its inception, and I am honored to now be a part of it.

I primarily practice in management-side, labor and employment law in Wisconsin, but I have a special interest in how social media interacts with these practice areas. My posts will focus on various ways that social media collides with the law in this respect and others.

As a side note, I not only observe social media but I am a user, too. You can follow me on Twitter @jesse_dill. I typically Tweet about developments dealing with labor and employment law, Milwaukee, and the occasional grumblings about how my favorite teams are not meeting my perfectly reasonable (read: exceedingly high) expectations.

Social media services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Instagram, and the like have quickly become the hot topic in my line of work because of their widespread use among employers and employees. Whether an employer wants to utilize a service for recruiting purposes or try to regulate its use by employees in the workplace, a host of fascinating issues arise while attempting to apply old legal theories to these new devices.

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