My Continuing Legal Education

I attended a continuing legal education course this evening.  Attendance at these courses is required in order to remain an attorney in good standing in the State of New York.... As a result, these classes tend to be less about actual learning and instead, really serve as a three hour block of time for my fellow attorneys to figure out a way to appear interested in the lecture being given...

As such, the majority of attendies spend their time in a frenetic email orgy  on their black berries, which they sometimes coyly hide in their laps while others simply do not give a fuck and keep them in plain sight.  Or some like the gentleman I saw this evening have two blackberries and two cell phones sitting in front of them during the lecture... i can only imagine by the end of the three hour session, he was in full messaging lather unable to discern between the real world and the world at his finger tips...

Meanwhile, other attendees do listen.  However, these individuals are not really there to learn and instead spend their time trying to fomulate the most convoluted "gotcha" style question in order to prove that they are mentally superior to the panel giving the lecture.  This type of attendee acts in this manner because they are simply reliving their law school years where they spent their time sitting in the front of the class engaging the professor in hours of non-sensical legal discussion about whether or not a binding contract is created when a party to said contract after saying the word "accept" was immediately run over by a pack of wild dogs and killed... Meanwhile, the rest of us (myself included) sat in the back of the class hoping that either the professor or this piece of shit would have an anorysm or simply pass out from talking too much. I also wanted to drive a pencil through both of their skulls...

And the third group of attendees kind of listens to the lecture... kind of doodles... maybe checks the baseball score.. thinks about dinner... maybe a beer.. writes... stares off in space... sleeps.. or basically watches the clock like we are in detention on a friday afternoon.

Not sure exactly what the NY Bar is hoping to achieve by all of this but I am pretty sure its not working.

Thankfully, this evening was relatively painless since the extensive question cocksmokery was kept to a minimum this evening, and I was able to sit quietly and write this entry while everyone else around me tapped away on their blackberries creating an impromptu legal drum circle... and, they served light refreshments.