Making law school friends

I remember starting law school last year and wondering if it would be hard to find friends here at Green Hall. It turns out that between small sections and Student Bar Association (SBA) football tailgates it really isn’t that hard to find people with like interests.

One of the things I really enjoyed my 1L fall semester was the small sections, which group you together with 20-something of your fellow 1Ls in one of the core curriculum classes. My small section was contracts class with Professor Peck. Between the Learned Hand Chicken Feed and the dinner Professor Peck hosted at his house, many of my good friends in school came from meeting them in my small section.

Additionally, a great thing about KU in the fall is the SBA football tailgates on “the hill”. Although basketball may reign supreme at KU from October to April, KU football has had its fair share of success is recent years. One of the traditions for KU football is tailgating on “the hill” that overlooks Memorial Stadium. Every home game the tailgate provides a reprieve from my studies, an opportunity to hang out with other law students and alumni. It’s yet another great way to meet other law students that you may not know from class.

Between the two of these and many of the other activities at KU Law in the fall, I have met some of my best friends in law school. As a 1L I would definitely recommend attending the events to meet people, and at the very least give you a break from hitting the books. I think these events help to create the collegial atmosphere at KU Law, and they are part of what sets KU Law apart from other law schools in my mind.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

Matt Meyer, 2L

Wine Law

This past weekend I presented at a Law Library conference in San Francisco. One of the presentations I attended was a short run-down on wine law. I found the history utterly fascinating! I won’t go into to much detail here but I will say that the current hot-topic issue is direct-to-consumer shipping. Of course each state has its own rules regarding who can ship wine within the borders and how much can be shipped.

Rules, you say? Well this sounds like a research project!

Let’s say you are a grower and producer of wine and you would like to ship your wine out of state to individuals in, say, Kansas. Where would you go to locate information?

The Wine Institute contains many useful resources. Based out of San Francisco, the Wine Institute…”is the public policy advocacy association of California wineries. Wine Institute brings together the resources of 1,000 wineries and affiliated businesses to support legislative and regulatory advocacy, international market development, media relations, scientific research, and education programs that benefit the entire California wine industry.”

They have gathered together, on their website, resources for all 50 states. The Kansas page not only provides a summary of what it takes to ship wine into the state, it also provides links to relevant documents regarding Kansas alcohol laws.

  • Kansas Department of Revenue’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC)
  • Application for a Liquor License
  • KS Business Tax Application – Register to pay Liquor Enforcement Tax
  • Liquor Enforcement Tax Return – Monthly Filing

There are many more!

So check out the Wine Institute’s website and have a look around. It’s quite fascinating!

W. Blake Wilson, Instructional Librarian

KU Law: MADD about making a difference!

Waking up at 8am on a Saturday isn’t usually the first thing students want to do. However, on October 2nd, 44 students and 13 alumni woke up bright and early to volunteer for the 3rd Make a Difference Day. KU Law students, alumni, and professors all gathered in Green Hall at 9am for breakfast and to receive their assignments for the day.

After eating some donuts and getting their fill of coffee and orange juice, volunteers headed off to projects which included: treating wood playground equipment at Hilltop Childcare Center, painting indoors at Independence Inc., weeding at Woodlawn Elementary, helping care for animals at the Humane Society, gift wrapping presents for the annual Children’s Holiday Shop at the Lawrence Arts Center, and a lot of grueling yard-work at Hidden Valley Girl Scout Camp (special thanks to ILS for volunteering for that!). While the volunteers only made a dent in the amount of help needed in the Lawrence community due to the time constraints, their participation was greatly appreciated. The tasks were done quickly and thoroughly due to the number of volunteers that signed up. An employee at the Lawrence Arts Center expressed how surprised she was at the amount of work the volunteers were able to accomplish in the few hours they were there.

SBA helped plan the event with Noelle Uhler, Director of External Relations. It is wonderful to see people, who are normally too busy to really take care of themselves, volunteering to wake up early and go help others. In this area of concentration it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. Through Make a Difference Day, KU Law was able to reach out and prove to others, and ourselves, that we have the dedication and commitment to make a change in the lives of others, no matter how big or small.

Natasha Das, 3L

The power of positive psychology: part two

In our last Career Services blog posting, we introduced the field of positive psychology and its potential impact on law students and lawyers. To review, positive psychology is the science of exceptional human performance. Researchers in the field consider a number of questions, and one of the most important and fundamental is – what makes us happy?

Is it money? Prestige in the form of good grades? Status from wealth or material possessions? Education level? Youth?

Positive psychology research would answer in the negative to each of these.

Research by positive psychology pioneers Dr. Edward Diener—aka Dr. Happiness—and Dr. Martin Seligman has shown that once your basic needs are met, additional income does little to raise your sense of satisfaction with life. Neither education nor a high IQ is consistently linked by research to happiness.

According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, older people tend to be more satisfied with life than the young and less likely to fall into dark moods.

In an oft-cited study of law students, there was no significant correlation between a lack of distress and age, undergraduate GPA or law school GPA.

So what makes the average law student happy?

Professor Lawrence Kreiger of the Florida State University College of Law and Professor Ken Sheldon of the Department of Psychology of the University of Missouri concluded in their research that law students thrive when the things they value most relate to (1) understanding or improving oneself; (2) being closely connected to other people; (3) helping others; and (4) building community.

Kreiger and Sheldon identified a shift in law students away from activities and behaviors that are inherently enjoyable, meaningful or important and towards extrinsic motivations. As students progress through law school they increasingly report pursing goals to please others. Examples may include impressing others through wealth accumulation, status or prestige, or doing things out of guilt, fear or compulsion. Students who emphasize extrinsic motivation or values tend to experience persistent stress and anxiety and are unlikely to experience sustainable happiness.

Based on positive psychology research, what then are some practical steps law students can take that fit into the intrinsic motivation model that has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety and to promote sustainable happiness?

Here are a few suggestions that consistently pop up in the research:

Practice gratitude

  • Write in a gratitude journal, a diary in which you express what you are grateful for every day or week.
  • Write a letter to or visit with someone who has made a difference in your life.

Perform acts of kindness

  • Studies have shown that people receive a greater happiness “boost” by doing good things for others rather than themselves.
  • The acts should be both random (holding a door open for a stranger with an armful of packages) and systematic (participating in a Big Brothers Big Sisters program once a week).
  • These acts make you feel generous and capable and help build connections with others. They also tend to result in reciprocated kindness.

Take care of your body

  • Sleep—7 to 8 hours a night.
  • Exercise—Take a look at KU psychology professor Steve Ilardi’s groundbreaking research about depression, which has shown that of the six factors tracked by Ilardi, exercise has the biggest effect on treating depression.
  • Stretch
  • Smile and Laugh (really)

Law schools are increasing warming to the tenants of positive psychology. In addition to the work of Prof. Lawrence Kreiger at FSU Law, important research into the potential for positive psychology to improve the lives of law students has been completed by Prof. Todd Peterson at the George Washington Law School, and Dan Bowling at Duke University School of Law School has recently begun teaching a for-credit elective called Well-Being and the Practice of Law.

In our final posting in the series, we’ll tackle some additional, more theoretical ways to combat depression and improve the potential for happiness.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

My (fun) first-year experiences

Rather than whine about how challenging and difficult the first year of law school is (I do that enough on Facebook), I’m choosing to write about something you never hear from a first year student: law school can be fun. Yes, there is an endless amount of reading, and yes, it is all very challenging. I expected that when I applied to law school. It’s the nature of the beast. What I didn’t expect was the fun experiences that I have had already.

Wednesday Night Sand Volleyball

Since the start of the semester, a number of first year students have gotten together every Wednesday night to relax by playing some sand volleyball. It has turned the middle of the week into a night that everybody looks forward to. Starting as something fun to do for ten people, Wednesday Night Volleyball has turned into a tradition that includes around 30 people every week. We choose new teams every week because we are consistently getting new people involved. It’s proven to be not only a fun way to relax on Wednesday nights, but also a great way to make friends with classmates I haven’t had the chance to meet yet.

Exploring Lawrence

There is always something cool going on in Lawrence. Comedian Aziz Ansari performed at KU’s Lied Center and students only had to pay $10 to see him. A couple of weeks ago I went to this free sidewalk performer festival called the Busker Festival. I saw the American Strong Woman, a magician, a couple of bands, and even a puppet show. In addition to going to the various shows and festivals, Lawrence has a lot of trendy restaurants and bars. Whether I’m going to dinner for a friend’s birthday or going to a bar to watch Monday Night Football, exploring Lawrence with friends is always a lot of fun.

Saturday Game Days

Graduating undergrad from Marquette University, I never had a college football team. I had been to KU football games before, but never as an actual KU student. Even though the team has had its ups and downs, I have always had going to the games and tailgating. KU Law’s Student Bar Association (SBA) organizes a free tailgate before each home game, which is a great place to hang out and meet other classmates, upperclassmen, and faculty. My favorite experience as a KU student came when KU beat #15 Georgia Tech and we rushed the field. It not only was a huge upset, but it was a really exciting game in itself.

Don’t be like me and only expect the worst. Don’t get me wrong, I did find out that the reading is endless, the material is difficult, and the professors are challenging. But I also realized that my classmates are going through the same motions that I am, and that there are plenty of opportunities for us to have a good time.

Henry Thomas, 1L

Researching Native American Law

Native American law covers the body of law concerning American Indian tribes and their interactions with federal and state authorities, as well as among themselves. Historically, Native American law has been chiefly influenced and shaped by federal Indian policy. Tribes are generally considered self-governing, independent entities. However, this independence is subject to the power of Congress to regulate the status of tribes.

A distinction worth noting is the fact that tribal law deals specifically with the internal law which governs the affairs of each tribe and its members. Sources of tribal law include oral tradition, tribal constitutions and codes, as well as codes borrowed from other sources.

We do have a Legal Research Subject Guide available on the topic of Tribal Law. I will admit that it does need some updating so you might want to search through our catalog as well. The following search terms are useful when using the library catalog, databases and other online sources: American Indian law, federal Indian law, Indian law, Native American law, tribal law.

For research out of the law library, I have found the Native American Rights Fund’s National Indian Law Library to be a wonderful resource. From their website:

The National Indian Law Library (NILL) is a public law library devoted to federal Indian and tribal law. Our mission is to develop and make accessible a unique and valuable collection of Indian law resources and other information relating to Native Americans. NILL places special emphasis on fulfilling the information needs of Indian law advocates and others working on behalf of Native Americans.

They have a listing of resources by topic which I have found to be very useful.

Just browsing this database gives you an incredible perspective on the issues that face Native Americans.

I encourage you to take a look at this site and if you have any questions with regards to researching Native American Law, feel free to contact me!

W. Blake Wilson
Instructional Librarian