Premature Aging

I just got back from a weekend trip in Jersey with my friend "Teddy." She and I attended the Philadelphia Bench Bar Conference at Ballys in Atlantic City. Its basically an annual get together of over 500 hundred judges and lawyers to wine, dine, schmooze and earn CLE (continuing legal education) credits. For a whopping student "discount" price, I was hoping for some more goodies (see below). Still I was satisfied with the mug, the portfolio and other random little items. The food was delicious as well.



We attended two panels, one that dealt with real estate fraud, where people buy vacant or abandoned homes, look up its title (i.e. who held the house last) and sell it to prospective buyers. The fraud in this is that they are selling "bad title," or property that isn't going to really be the prospective buyers, because the previous owner of the home cannot be identified. The sellers of these properties make money off of these unsuspecting buyers by giving them fraudulent titles. I know, enough with the property lesson, right?

The second panel was much more interesting from my end. We sat in on a mock opening argument by a lawyer, where we the audience was the jury. The demonstration was to show how video depositions (interviews with the witnesses) during opening statements can be effectively persuasive in winning your case. After the presentation, Teddy asked me whether I think I could do a better job than the guy who did the argument. That made me giggle. Because, I think either of us probably could.

Aging. There was plenty of that to be seen amongst all the attendees; I think being surrounded by these older legal professionals caused me to grey within the hour - the bathroom mirror revealed a white hair that I refused to pull out. My hair is scarce as it is. I was glad we didn't attend the night before because then we'd have to see these old men (and women) gamble and get drunk.

All in all, the conference was a good experience and I'm glad I got exposure to some of the people out there in the legal community. Although we didn't network much, we did meet a few people (including a "Varghese" and woot that was his first name!) and a judge who will be visiting our school this week.

My friend and I did have a desire to stay there longer to walk the boardwalk, play and shop and even --gasp!--see J.Lo and her blood-sucking-hubby in concert. I am not a great fan of either, but it would be interesting to see the dynamic.

To weekends!