I’m sitting in my Tax Accounting class. The professors (there are two) explain things. Some of the students ask questions. The professors respond. They are speaking in sentences. They seem to be having a meaningful exchange of information, but I can’t follow it for the life of me.

I don’t know if it’s because they’re speaking in jargony jarglejarg, or if the underlying concepts are actually difficult. A little of both? Sometimes the “relation words” they use imply that the connections between these concepts are straightforward, but what on earth are they talking about?

I can’t visualize this stuff easily. If you tell me somebody buys a company, and the seller indemnifies the buyer, I already have to stop and draw a diagram to remember who is who. This doesn’t happen to me often, but . . . I don’t understand, and I don’t understand how other people understand. Trying to parse just one sentence the professor says would take me a minute or two—it’s not long before I’m completely lost.

I did take the basic Federal Income Tax class last semester, but I’ve never taken any kind of Accounting class. And of course I’ve never been involved in any complex financial transaction or made enough money to have an interesting tax return. Maybe that has something to do with it? But I am smart. I pick things up quickly. Not everything, I guess.

The frustrating thing is that I can’t tell if I’m anywhere close to understanding, or if I’m hopeless. I wish someone who (1) understood this stuff, (2) comprehended how dumb I am about finance, and (3) had a math brain could explain this to me.

Here, I’ll transcribe for a while, so you can get a sense of the language. If this makes perfect sense to you, then maybe you are my magic 1+2+3 explainer person.

Concurrent with the $500k that’s royalty income, you get to claim a percentage depletion, and that gives you a tax percentage rate on the tax coming in. So we need to find you a deduction on the tax you paid in the earlier year so that your give-back is exactly the same, or you’ve been over-compensated.

And so the Court looks to the policy arguments and says, “If we don’t do this, you’re going to get a double deduction.” Now the dissent makes much of the fact that 1341 was Congress’s reply to these kinds of questions, and they didn’t choose to deal with tax preference items in 1341. But the court blows through that and says that 1341 isn’t the only place we deal with transactional parity, it’s just one example. And the dissent has great fun with that, but the majority says no, we are not going to believe that Congress intended to create something that says no, you have no net benefit.

So even though this isn’t covered by 1341, we’re going to say that $500k needs to be a deduction at 72% of the $500k. Why? Because we need to grind down the percentage depletion deduction. And the policy reason for that is on p. 517, that the Court simply does not want a double deduction situation to occur.

See what I mean? If you went through and replaced all the nouns, these paragraphs would make plenty of sense. But as they are, to me, they’re gobbledygook. Comprehensibility feels so close, but so far away.

When I signed up for my first tax class, I thought it would be fun because tax is all about math and lots of fiddly rules. I like math, and I like fiddly rules: slam dunk. Not so. It’s about words, and not in the way that I like words. It feels like a bunch of English majors trying to rederive freshman physics, but without equations. And then they have to use it to build an aircraft carrier. And the damn thing floats, but fuck if I can figure out how. You know?

All heard on a lunch panel today, from three different attorneys. All spoken with no apparent irony.

“You can totally balance your work and family life—you just have to manage your time. For example, my son plays Little League, and I really enjoy going out to his games. What I do is focus on being as productive as I can from eight to six. Then I can go to the game and pick back up with work at nine or ten.”

“I tell you, these Blackberries are the best thing ever. If you’re on a family trip to the Grand Canyon, and you’re talking on your cell phone the whole time, that kinda puts a damper on things. But with the Blackberry, I just asked my wife to drive while I sat in the back seat typing away.”

“I have a two-year-old, so what I like to do is log on and work for an hour or two after we put her to bed.”

Eff that noise.

How lucky I am that the top-tier firms these attorneys work for would never hire a middle-of-the-road student like me.

If I ran the world, I would decree that each additional year of education would qualify a person to work LESS, not more. Money is nice and all, but you can’t buy back your time.

Tonight I mediated my first real case, and I’m hooked.

I enrolled in the mediation clinic this semester because the transactional clinic (helping small businesses) was full. Within the first hour of the 40-hour training course, I was pumped.* Mediation seemed like the perfect fit for my personality: you don’t take sides, don’t make judgments, don’t try to game the system to get ahead; you’re there to ask questions, keep everyone on track, and help people resolve their own problems.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned in law school: the more I hear about the lives of everyday attorneys, the more I want out. It sounds like hell, especially during the first few years. And lawyering can be . . . ethically challenging. Alternative dispute resolution, on the other hand, is something I can get behind. It patches up gaps in the legal system, frees up overburdened courts, and leaves participants feeling empowered. Unicorns and hugs all around.

So I figured I’d enjoy mediation. Heck, maybe I could even make a career out of it. But I worried that it would be hard to get started. Even though I’m certified to mediate, who would trust me, not even an attorney, with their case? Won’t they see how young I am? Some hard-ass would probably ask for my bar card, then throw me out of the room. Or some legal topic would come up from a class I hadn’t taken (or didn’t pay attention in), and I would be crushed under the weight of my own inexcusable ignorance.

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More than three days in, and I’m still on track. It helps that I’ve been keeping busy: last night we did a short interactive taiko show before Tao‘s performance in Galveston, and today we had an extra long practice to prepare for our trip to Hidalgo next weekend.

As a result, I hurt. All over really, but mostly in my back, shoulders, and arms. And I’m exhausted. I might skip dinner and go straight to bed. I know, poor me, getting to spend so much time doing something I love.

In the near future I’ll have hours and hours of newly-freed-up time to spend on taiko because at the end of last week I resigned from journal. My paper was so far behind that things were getting ridiculous, and my best option was to make a clean break of it. No hard feelings on either side, I don’t think. After I finish up a few assignments next week, I’ll be done.

(more…)

I’ve been lucky this year to be in some (okay, two) of the right classes at the right times. Last semester, when much of the healthcare debate was going on, I was in Health Law Survey. We didn’t have time to do a comprehensive analysis of the issues, but we read a few articles and looked at some of the provisions in the bills, and the process was enlightening.

I learned just enough in that course to know that U.S. health care is insanely complicated and full of problems and money sinks, and that I never ever want to practice health law.

And now I’m in Space Law in time to talk about Obama’s announcement of the cancellation of the Constellation program. To be honest, I haven’t been keeping up with space stuff in the last few years, and I knew very little about Constellation before it got axed. I’m excited about the further development of private space enterprises, personally, but it’s going to be weird for NASA not to have a manned spaceflight program. Will American kids nowadays have to dream of becoming space tourists?

I heard on the radio a couple weeks ago that NASA will be auctioning off the artifacts of the shuttle program that museums don’t want. I don’t know if any of the auction is open to the public, but how cool would that be, to own a little tiny piece of a space shuttle? Or even a lowly space shuttle wrench that spent its whole career in Florida? Surely there are more bolts and unidentifiable thingamajigs than the museums of the world can handle.

Of course, now I can’t find any reference to this auction at all, except a few news articles about the shuttles themselves being offered to museums (for a surprisingly low price, in the hundreds of thousands). I did, however, find this little series called “50 Years of NASA” from KUHF. You’d better not have been lying to me about this auction thing, KUHF. I can see you from the Law Center. Or I could if the building had windows on that side.

So yeah. Maybe I wandered a little off topic in this post. But I want my space stuff.

[Source: xkcd.com]

Oh man, do I ever love me some dimensional analysis. It’s so satisfying to line up all the units and cross them out two-by-two until you’re left with the perfect combination…or the mess that confirms that you’ve gravely misunderstood the problem.

If only I could figure out how to apply this fun and useful skill to the study of law, my life would be radically more fulfilling.

I came to school today because I thought the low-distraction environment would help me focus on studying for my exams.

I’m in the journal office right now. It’s the best place I’ve found to study, at least when it’s not too busy, because it has lots of semi-enclosed workspaces with big desks. And, unlike in the library, I can eat in here.

Today there are three people in the office besides me. Two are studying quietly at a table together. The third is bravely attempting to induce carpal tunnel syndrome by playing a computer game that involves incessant high-speed clicking.

I’m pretty sure wrist injuries won’t get you out of taking your exams. Why are you here, clicky-person? Over the last forty-five minutes, not thirty seconds have gone by without a barrage of clickclickclickclickclick. Can’t you clickclick at home?

What’s that, voice of reason? Ask clicky-person to stop? You mean, like, go over there and say it out loud? No, that’s crazy. I will put in my taiko earplugs and fume on the internet instead.

Good news! Google Scholar has added a vast swath of federal and state opinions, journal articles, and patents to its database. Huzzah!

As a law student, I have free suck-you-in-and-get-you-hooked full access to Lexis and Westlaw, but that will evaporate when I graduate**. Getting access to the pay databases through a firm is expensive and can be touchy, especially if you’re made to feel guilty for every minute you spend logged in and every case you print; the expense can keep smaller firms and solo practitioners out of the easy-online-access game altogether.

I’ve spent a few minutes poking around Google Scholar’s legal offerings by looking up a case we’re discussing tonight in Professional Responsibility: Gaspard v. Beadle, 36 S.W.3d 229. It’s worth a skim, even if you’re not used to reading cases; sex, betrayal, and a UH Law grad in the role of the asshole lawyer make for a juicy story.

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No, my Kroger card will not let me into the law school basement. Not the debit card, either.

It’s been a long day.

So yeah, my level of fail at NaBlo 2009 is reaching epic proportions. I’ve come to accept it. November’s been busy, and it’s flying by. Ten pages of my journal paper, complete with footnotes, due in two days? Criminy.

Today was my third day in a row of taiko performances—two at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands, and one in College Station. Next weekend we’re on the road again to Alexandria, and it’s a 90-minute show, so we’ve got two practices (maybe three) this week to prepare for that.

But right now, if I can deny the existence of my paper deadline for a little longer, life is good. I just took a hot shower, and now I’m sitting on John’s balcony with a beer and my laptop, enjoying the November weather. What’s that? It’s snowing where you live? You can’t go outside with wet hair and bare feet? Suck it. This is our reward for making it through the summer.

Also, I just got to watch a guy throw up over the side of his balcony at an apartment across the street. So that’s nice.