Friday, February 24, 2017

New School Alert: Selling Down the (UC-)River(side)

California Needs Another Law School, State Legislator Says.

Be still my grease-clogged heart!

Sabrina Cervantes (D., Corona) - in no way, shape, or form quixotic like the title character of her potential ancestor's greatest work - has proposed a new law school at UC-Riverside.

Cervantes - 29 and daughter of a local politician - is a graduate of UC-Riverside and some program at Harvard, so you know she has the chops and the institution's best interests at heart.

Even if she doesn't have the details yet.
The bill contains a single sentence: “It is the intent of the Legislature to later enact legislation that would provide for the establishment and construction of a school of law at the University of California, Riverside.” The proposal does not include cost or timeline projections—details, Cervantes said, that would be worked out later.
Obviously needed a legal writer or two to tackle the task.  Much like the million dollar law degree, we can figure the pesky details out later.  For now, it's simply time to act, to build a great institution of the law to serve Southern California, a place so devoid of legal education that the closest law school to Riverside is an absurdly ridiculous 22 miles away, which can take up to an HOUR when traffic along Highway 60 is a bitch, the indignity!  How the fuck are you supposed to stop for coffee before class?  Make finals week "work" while not missing Game of Whatever?

This Los Angeles story is timely.  With the Academy Awards this weekend, I would like to pitch my hot-as-burning-zoo screenplay.  It's called Law-Law Land, and it's about a young male lawyer in LA whose only dream is to run a solo firm trying cases like Perry Mason because pretending it's 1960 without the civil rights shit gives him wood.  He meets a spunky young woman who wants to take her case of wrongful discharge from In-and-Out to the Supreme Court so she can be a case title and bathe in the riches and limelight of jurisprudential fame and ain't no 9th Circuit gonna stop her.  There's singin', dancin', foregone bland romancin', and eventually they get everything they could ever ask for in their careers, because life is easy for these PBS millennials with their Twitter and their lattes and their craft alcohol and their iPhone apps and their stockpiles of post-ironic kitsch...

Just go to this new UC-Riverside law school, put a bit of interest in, and you'll be swimming in the river of cash like Scrooge MacFuckstick.  Holy Buddha, Batman, a 29-year-old is in the General Assembly; don't you think YOU, scion of the digital revolution and consumer of Cool Things, can work as a measly lawyer?

Well, don't ya?

4 comments:

  1. She probably went to some 3 week program for a certificate from Harvard. Saying that California needs a new law school is akin to saying the state needs another 8.5 earthquake.

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    Replies
    1. Harvard offers little half-day courses on this and that that are open to anyone with an Internet connection and the money to pay. The key attraction for many people is the opportunity to say, for the rest of their lives, that they "studied at Harvard".

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  2. The title of this posting has inspired a song:

    Gonna lay down my fantasies
    At UC Riverside,
    At UC Riverside,
    At UC Riverside.
    Gonna lay down my fantasies
    At UC Riverside
    And study law no more.

    Ain't gonna study law no more,
    Ain't gonna study law no more...

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  3. The bill is pointless. It merely declares legislative intent to do something down the line. Big fucking deal.

    ReplyDelete