On Mentors, Office Space, and Invasions

It's been a busy week.

I had a chance to journey up Highway 6 yesterday to visit my old stomping grounds in Waco and hear the farewell lecture of one of my favorite professors and people, Mark Osler. The lecture was great, as he reflected on his time at Baylor and the people and moments that had made lasting impressions on him. I'm really glad that I was able to make it up for it, and I feel very fortunate to have been at Baylor while he was there. He was my professor for a course in oral advocacy, as well as professional responsibility when I was in Practice Court. He also observed many of my mock trial exercises during PC and gave me a lot of great coaching and advice. He made a huge impact on me, as a person and as a professional, and particularly in my development as a public speaker and advocate. This was apparent in the earlier events of the day.

I had left for Waco straight from the Bush School after giving a presentation on privatization in transportation policy, taking the position that the shift towards more private operated toll roads poses many problems and should be taken with caution. I felt really good about how my part of the presentation went. I was comfortable up there, had a command of the facts, spoke with confidence, and seemed to keep people interested. I might even have been a little persusasive. Now, I do not have any natural talent for that sort of thing. For most of my life, I have been terrified of public speaking. The fact is, I've had excellent coaching along the way, and Professor Osler was a tremendous part of that. One example stands out to me where I was in Practice Court giving an opening statement to the jury, and Osler was in my courtroom observing.

As I stumbled through my opening statement, trying to set out the facts of the case and essentially why the jury should care at all about my client, Osler stopped me. Now, Osler read the blog that I kept in law school, and so he knew a little about me and that I was a guitar player. He asked me, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, "James, do you play any instruments?" A little surprised by this question, I answered "Yes". He asked, "what instrument do you play?" I replied "I play the guitar". He asked "which one of your guitars is your favorite?". I said, "my Les Paul". He then said "James, tell me really briefly about the day you bought your Les Paul." I then relaxed a little bit, and proceeded to give the narrative of the day I went to Guitar Center, played a few guitars until I found the one I had to have, and then bought it. Really simple, on the surface really mundane, but it was a story that I cared about and was able to tell with some enthusiasm. He then said "That's a good story. Now, do the exact same thing with your client's story." Advocacy involves taking the facts, whatever they may be, and using them to craft a narrative that people will care about and are able to connect to, and that is one of the biggest things I learned from Professor Osler. I wish him the best of luck as he leaves Baylor for St. Thomas Law School, they are getting one of the best in the business.

Ok, rest assured I won't be getting sentimental too often on this blog. In other news, we had an SGA meeting today. The topic of office space (you know, those offices they told us we would be getting at interview conference) came up, and we talked briefly about options. Somebody mentioned that there are some offices up stairs that the Poli Sci department aren't using. I thought to myself, "I wonder if we could take those offices through adverse possession?" For my non-attorney readers, the doctrine of adverse possession is essentially that if you take actual and hostile possession of another person's real property, the possession is "open and notorious", and the owner doesn't take any legal action to remove you from the real property for a statutory period, in this case 10 years, the property is then yours.

I propose we go ahead and move in upstairs, "liberate" the office space, and see what they do about it. If they don't do anything about it for 10 years, we get to keep it. Besides, it's just a matter of time before they invade us. A preemptive strike would be justified...