Family Law, Again

I guess that wasn't all I had to say about Family Law, but this is more about legal education in general. (As a side note, that post right before bed gave me this bizarro bad dream about family issues, but that won't be blogged about.) There are no doubt flaws in my clinical experience, some things are repetitive and it gets down right depressing how infrequently I am actually able to do something about peoples' problems. (It is a neverending source of amazement what is totally unfair and completely legal. Or "close enough." We call that "harmless error" and I am sure spending the majority of the rest of your life in prison feels a lot better when a bright-eyed twentysomething tells you it's because of a "harmless" error.) But I cannot imagine doing the second two years of law school without it. It's an outlet, it makes things relevant and interesting to me, centers me on why I am doing this whole silly enterprise. I have a client who told me at our last meeting that my advice on his out-of-state child support was great, he'd do that and by the way, the mother and child moved to a different state. "Whoooaaah, ok, well... that actually makes a difference... let me get back to you about the best plan of action there? " So I am meeting with my supervising attorney, asking her whether the whole thing gets transferred over to the new state, what about the unpaid portion, etc? And she starts asking me where the child was born, where the mother is from, how long they lived in the first state and I am midway into explaining all of this... before I realize, I am taking Conflict of Laws this semester, this is exactly what I am learning about-- how different systems interact and which law is used. There is a serious flaw in the legal education that keeps everything at this intellectual level, so much that you can't or don't access it when it comes up in real life... Jesus christ, I had read cases about child support for that class 2 days before! Ok, that's all for now. It's another day. Finals are so fucking boring.