Monday night

We are all geared up and ready for an exciting first day in Boston. We will be meeting law students from Boston University starting tomorrow afternoon, followed by a tour of the Suffolk County Jail on Wednesday and an interview with a public defender.

Justice and Law 2010

This year the Justice and Law group will be interviewing a public defender, a retired judge and tour the Suffolk County Jail. We hope to learn more about the careers in the field of law and law enforcement as well as examine the topic of drug use and abuse in our society. How does the casual and prolific use of drugs affect our lives?

Final Project

Blog John Adams Court House

Before going to the John Adams Court House we had an idea in our minds about what we were going to see. We were planning on learning about the trial process for a drug offender in the Massachusetts legal system. Unfortunately when we arrived the tour wasn’t quite what we were hoping. The tour was more about the history of the Court House and the Court of appeals. Although it was interesting it didn’t quite live up to our expectations. -Joe V.

The John Adams courthouse experience was rather disappointing and did not meet our expectations. We were hoping to learn more about our justice system however we learned about the building itself and its history. Although the building was very beautiful and its design was very interesting it did not live up to are expectations. –Will k.

On the second day we started off by blogging about our jail experience then later that afternoon we went to the Suffolk County Court House now know as the John Adams Court House. When we walked in we had to go through metal detectors and then we met our tour guide. We were anxious to learn about how laws were made and court trials. We ended up learning more about the history of the courthouse and the branches. It was interesting information but did not have as much to do with our topic as we had hoped. Alyssa G.

For the second day we went to the John Adams Courthouse. The history behind it was very interesting. There were statues that each represented a certain moral on them. The tour was kind of boring. We got to see where the seven justices have trials. Talking to the judge was interesting as well. Andrew G


Our visit to John Adams Court House felt off topic, I thought it was going to be a tour on the process of being convicted of a crime and going to jail. But instead it was a tour of the Court House, it was a beautiful tour but it was dry and felt like a history class. The building had amazing artwork and unreal views, plus the furniture was beautiful - Frank Taylor

The Tour of the John Adams Court House was not what we expected it to be. All of us thought we would learn about Laws and how they get created, but instead we got a historical tour through the courthouse. But it was interesting and we learned how often and were which trial is taking place. The Courthouse was impressive and our tour guide did a great job. –Constantin v.B.

My second day of JUA started off with a bang, literally. We were awaken at 8:00 am to Mrs. Frame banging on our hotel door to wake us up. Later on during our day we arrived at the John Adams Court House. After our tour, which included courtrooms, libraries, and sculptures we met with a Judge Daniels. He was very informative with how the Justice system works inside the courtroom.
-Keppler M.

On the second day of JUA, we visited the John Adams Courthouse. We had a woman named Betsy as our tour guide. I took a lot out of this tour. I learned all of the history behind the building and how it came to be what is today. We discovered what it means to appeal the verdict and we meet a judge. I will always remember my tour and the information I gained next time I see this courthouse.
-Mike V

The courthouse wasn’t really what I had hoped for and anticipated. It was more about appeals and the case process. I wish it had been more about how they deal with drug cases. I wish we got to see a trial too, a first hand experience would have been the most educational way to learn in my opinion. Lucy C.

Suffolk County Sheriff's Department

Jail Blog

 Today, we visited the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. We learned numerous informational facts pertaining to the day-to-day life in jail and the effects of serving time. After touring the facility, we met an unfortunate, but extremely intelligent young man named Jet Vidri. He shared with us his life story, how he ended up in his predicament, and lessons on staying clean. He spoke marvelously and our heart went out to this poor man, who sadly learned his lesson the hard way.  We met a strapping young lad who shared similar attributes to a younger version of Hulk Hogan. Overall, we learned a lot and took a deeper look at the consequence of crime. Myself, I found this as a great experience. The effects of jail really hit me particularly when the guest speaker, Jet, openly answered questions. I truly felt bad for this man and hope I will never end up in the situation that he is in. This experience was life changing and emotional. – Mike V.

The visit to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department changed my perspective on jail life. It was intense to see the inside every day life of a inmate. The basketball court surrounded by concrete walls with one open end, so a inmate could get very little but some fresh air.  The interview with inmate Jet Vidri gave me a different perspective on drugs and violence, his life story was amazing and honestly me sad at points. His incite and mature outlook on his situation is amazing to see, going from an O G (Original Gangster), then a drug dealer. Then going to jail twice. His life is on the turn around and it was reassuring to see someone bounce back from such harsh background’s of gangster life.      -Frank T

On our first day we visited a jail, which is different than a prison. A jail is where someone goes after they’ve been booked to wait to go to a trial. A prison is where a criminal serves time. We got to walk trough a prison unit and see what the inmates ate for lunch, where they hangout and where they shower. Everyone seemed generally unhappy and angry that we, free people, got to walk around in their space. When the man giving our tour picked up a tray of food the inmates were yelling and being very defensive of their only food. Jail changes a person’s whole mentality. They are stuck in the same place everyday, with no real choices. They go through the same routine everyday. It sucks. Lucy C.

The part of the trip that impacted me the most was when we got to meet the inmate. Before I met him I had a solid image of the average inmate, but after talking to him my whole outlook on jail and the kind of people that end up in there changed. He was extremely open and gave us honest answers to some very tough personal questions. After talking to him I know that I would never ever want to end up where he is right now.      Joe V.

Suffolk County jail was an eye opening experience for me. I have only seen prison life in movies or on TV, but never in real life. When I first walked into the building it seemed nice, marble floors, high ceilings, statues. After walking a short while I realized that this was a completely different world. In our society we have people that make good choices, and ones that make bad ones. In this jail, everyone has mad a poor choice. New Hampton School is sort of like a small town, a community; in the jail there were units. A unit is a mini floor that holds about 60 people with a lounge and tables; this is where some people live for five or six years.     –Keppler M.

Seeing those people sitting behind their doors, locked up for probably 3 years. Never see anybody for a long time. It was a shocking but also happy knowing that those people are locked up. It makes me sad though that people like Jett who are in there regretting everything and work-doing programs can’t go out of jail earlier. I just experienced that I know where I never want to end up.           -Constantin v.B.

Going to the jail was an experience that I would not want to go though alone. Being able to talk to one of the prisoners that is locked up there was a great deterrent to breaking the law. It was very surprising to hear what the prisoner that we talked to. He told us his story and what he realized had to change about his life.   Andrew G

I got the experience of a lifetime when I went to the Suffolk County jail. We got to tour the facility and I was able to see what the prison life was like. The thing that impacted me the most was when we got to talk to one of the inmates. He told us about how quickly you can go from the good kid to the one that ends up in jail. He had always received good grades and been a good student but then when he hit college he began to be someone he was not.  It proves how quickly a person can change and go from good to bad. Not only did he change from good to bad but also after going to prison twice he found who he wanted to be and became a good guy again.

                                                                                    Alyssa G.

 Visiting the Suffolk County Jail I received an experience that I shall never forget. Knowing how many inmates and the amount of new inmates that are staying in and coming into to jail amazed me. Then when we talked to the inmate he showed me how much regret he feels and how long two year seems when you have to be in jail and not leave. The inmate we spoke with sold drugs only for fast money and now he has been in prison twice and he seems he has have found a sort of peace within himself and I felt moved by that.  –Will K.

3 essential questions

Here are the three questions we will be exploring in Boston.

1. Is there a perceived acceptability of certain drug use among our society?

2. How are young drug offenders handled by our police system?

3. How does our court system handle youth drug offenders, especially minority youth?

You need to come up with 3 relevant and appropriate questions for each of the above essential questions.  These questions must be emailed to me no later than  March 2nd.

GETTING READY!

Use library resources (books & internet) to answer the following questions.
Write the answers as a comment on this post.

1. What was the first ancient Greek city-state to have a democratic government?
2. What was the Magna Carta?
3. Give one reason why the Magna Carta was relevant to our government and/or
justice system.
4. Define government.
5. Define democracy.
6. List the three branches of the federal government, and provide an example of a job that
belongs to each branch.
7. Define republic.
8. Who wrote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”? In what document?
9. Define constitution.
10. What is “The Bill of Rights”?

Can trials be unbiased with media saturation?

By Ali G.

With the amount of media coverage and the depths to which reporters today can delve into legal matters, how can any trial be left open and unbiased, especially in the cases which deal with foreign powers? Is there really such a thing as innocent until proven guilty?

Throughout the duration of my two days in Boston Massachusetts, my JUA group visited two law firms and watched two different trials. And throughout the whole experience I asked questions which I hoped would lead to the answer of my essential question. Question after question, all were answered and yet none of which even remotely answered my essential question. After the second interview I discovered something quite problematic; the law firms we went to, and presumably all law firms, do not deal with international laws.

I found out many things about Boston City Hall’s London office, but none of this was relevant to the theme of “Global Problems, Local Solutions”, none of it was relevant to my question. While at Boston City Hall I met a woman named Marybeth Long, who works in the Media Law department, she answered my questions on media allowances and what defines them.
Public Records Laws are very broad and open ended. They determine what is open to the public (Every document, paper, record, map, photograph, etc., as defined by law, that is made or received by a government entity or employee is presumed to be a public record (www.sec.state.ma). Those documents which are clearly defined by the laws can be disputed by lawyers and their clients. However, documents which are being processed or used in government affairs are under no means open to the public.

Over the course of our time spent in Boston we conducted several “person on the street” interviews. The opinions of these people were far more direct than those of the lawyers. I asked three general questions to several different individuals and parties, generally people believed the same thing; the media has access to far too much information in high profile cases, which is systematically polluting the jury pool and biasing cases. Several people brought the War on Iraq to my attention when I inquired about how they thought the media affected people’s opinions on high profile cases. I had the privilege to discuss this with two officers, one of whom happened to be going to school to become a lawyer, they believed that there was no privacy overseas for those involved in the war, and that the media is “trying the case before it goes to court…[the media] prejudices the case”.

The opinions of these people together with the hard facts about public record laws lead me to draw the conclusion that the media is, in fact, biasing trials. This is of course true for both those here at home and those abroad. Until the media is reigned in, without oppressing freedom of speech, this problem will continue and there will be no such thing as a fair and unbiased jury. However, having only based this upon rough facts and the opinions of a diverse group of people, my answer has not been based on too much of anything.

Where is law going today?

By Bri D.

My essential question was where is law going today? We have the constitution that states our individual rights, however, law places restrictions on your rights so how can we keep laws and our rights? However I didn’t really get that question answered so the only other question I can think of asking would be “how do I become a lawyer?”

My JUA experience was fun and I learned a little bit. We got to talk with lawyers such as Erika Holmes at Brown Rudnick an amazing law fern. Erika was a graduate of New Hampton in 1996. And she now works at Brown Rudnick. It was pretty much like a house, I wouldn’t mind working later and staying over there. I really enjoyed talking to her she was a normal person, she helped me out a lot with what exactly a lawyer does and I liked seeing a real life law fern, I would love to live in Boston and work in a law firm like that one. I like seeing how law firms worked and knowing just who was in charge of what laws. Then our group went to a real life trial! At first I wasn’t that excited but then when we started to walk in I was like oh my good I’m going in a courthouse wow! And then when we were in there I was like ok I’m watching a murder trial. For the first 45min it was ok I listen and got into it I knew what was going on, but then I feel asleep for about 20min but I was up long enough to know that the guy on trial was pretty much guilty or at least seemed it, he keep changing his story, and you could tell he was lying. The next day we went to watch another trial. When we got then we were going to watch the rape trial but they weren’t starting that until tomorrow so we ended up going to watch an armed robbery trial instead. It was so boring, first of all Nick got yelled at because the judge got mad at him for eating a candy inside the room and people keep giving us mean looks so after about an hour we left and went to Boston City Hall where we talked to Bill Sinnott and about nine other lawyers. They just keep coming in I was like wow nine real lawyer, I have only met one layer my whole life and that is my dads friend. So it was pretty cool to be sitting in a room with nine different ones. I liked going to the Boston City Hall because I found out who makes the laws and why they make them and we got inside information about some new laws they are trying to make election day more than one day so more people will vote. I found out that if I want to become a divorce layer I have a lot of work I need to do and a lot of different fields I need to study. But I also want to be a sexual defense layer, which has a lot or work too. But it is my dream to become a lawyer and I will work very hard in becoming one.

How fair is the law?

By Alex S.

Our “underlying theme” for the Junior Urban Adventure this year was Global Problems, Local Solutions- that is, we needed to consider a problem that affects many people around the world and help to find a solution with our question. As it happened, when I found out that I was going to be in the “Law” section, I was watching a news report that mentioned a small family filing a lawsuit against a business that had a large law firm on their side. It got me wondering how fair the modern legal world was, and whether average people still had a chance to affect change via the legal system, the entire purpose of which is to prevent injustice against people with less power.
Obviously, the answer to this question has massive implications all over the world. If the little people don’t have any voice in the legal system, then they may as well not have a voice at all, because businesses and individuals can ignore protests and angry letters much easier than court dates and jail sentences. Figuring that there were probably a great deal of both large law firms and solo practitioners in Boston, I thought the JUA would be a good chance to ask people on both sides of the “legal divide”, as well as people like judges and ordinary citizens what they felt about the situation: is it still possible for regular people to make changes via the legal system?
When it came to asking regular people, I got a variety of answers. A janitor working in Boston’s North Station believed that wealthy businesses and individuals had enough power to make the legal system do whatever they want, while a business-man looking type believed that government oversight agencies and the unbiased attitudes of judges kept this sort of thing in check. After asking several more people, I came to the conclusion that people’s attitudes regarding the legal system roughly corresponded to their socioeconomic class: the better off you were, the fairer you regarded the system to be.
I was pleased to find that, contrary to my original expectations, a great deal of evidence pointed to the conclusion that the legal system was still fair for the not-so-well-off. I discovered that large law firms actually had little advantage over solo practitioners in terms of the quality of their legal persuasion (I was quite surprised to hear an employee of a large legal firm actually admitting this): the difference is that they can contribute more manpower to a case, but the cases they are assigned to are often phenomenally more complex (like patent infringement cases), so the difference evens itself out. There are also different safeguards within the legal system itself to prevent such discrimination, such as different classes of judges and juries for different types of cases. At present, all the evidence I found seems to indicate that the legal system is still fair.

Post 2

It is day number two in the beautiful city of Boston. We are leaving in about 5 minuets so I'm going to try and make this as informative as possible without holding up the bus.
Nick came to our room at 7:40am but I guess I slept through that because I didn't get up until 8:00am and we left at 8:15am so I had to book it downstairs. I woke up with a miserable sore throat and didn't really feel up to much of anything. We left the Hostile and headed back to Government Center and on to the Courthouse where we attened our second trial. This one was armed robbery. It was actually fairly intersting. The witness on the stand when we walked in was the victim of the robbery and it was really interesting to see how nervous he was. The defense attorney even caught him in a lie. The next witness to take the stand was a police officer, it was nice to hear a person speak who was straight forward and actually knew what he was saying. We only got to stay for 40 minuets because we had another meeting to get to, so we were only able to see the prosecuting attorney and missed the defense's cross examination.
We went on to city hall, which was about a block from the courthouse. We arrived at 10:45am for an 11:00am meeting, but we accidentally ran into the guy we were supposed to be meeting and so we were immedeately taken into a conference room where we proceeded to meet with basically every person in the law department. Honestly, there had to be at least 11 different lawyers who just kept showing up. We thought we were only going to be meeting with Bill Sinott but he sent out for every available lawyer to come. He was EXTREMELY enthusiastic about it. It was almost comedic the amount of people that ended up at the meeting. But it was extremely informative. There were two women lawyers there who worked in a department which answered my essential question perfectly. I'm going to write a paper on it soon but I'm not sure if you're ever going to get to read it, but knowing the school you probably will even if I'm not the one to post it.
After that meeting we were done. We had nothing left to do after that so we went out for lunch, afterwhich we looked for the cafe the lawyers had told us got wireless internet, which probably took us the better part of two hours. When we finally found one Bri and Alex wrote their blogs which took forever and I needed to get a present for my brother's 18th birthday so I decided to blog later.
And that's what I'm doing now, blogging. I have to rap this up because Nick needs the computer so I may or may not write more later.

Okay bye,
~Ali

my two days in Jua

um...ok so monday,dec,11 at first I thought wow this is going to suck I don’t know what we are doing I don’t know who we are going to talk to I didn’t know what questions I was going to ask and I didn’t really want to be walking around. but then my group and I went to talk with Erika Holmes at Brown Rudnick an amazing law fern. Erika was a graduate of New Hampton in 1996. And she now works at Brown Rudnick. It was pretty much like a house, I wouldn’t mind working later and staying over there. I really enjoyed talking to her she was a normal person, she helped me out a lot with what exactly a lawyer does and I liked seeing a real life law fern, I would love to live in Boston and work in a law fern like that one. After that we had some time to kill so we went to eat at Dicks which was fun but would have been better at night. Then that our group went to a real life trial! At first I wasn’t that excited but then when we started to walk in I was like oh my good I’m going in a court house wow! And then when we were in there I was like ok I’m watching a murder trial. for the first 45min it was ok I listen and got into it I knew what was going on, but then I feel asleep for about 20min but I was up long enough to know that the guy on trial was pretty much guilty or at least seemed it, he keep changing his story, and you could tell he was lying haha what a dumb butt. After that we were all done our first day so we went back to the Hostel, chilled then got ready to go out for dinner. Dinner was fun and the Cheesecake factory was so good. Then we went back, chilled got ready for bad and I was out before 12.

Today at about 7:40 Nick came in and got us up but I was up because my alarm was set for 7:30 but I didn’t want to get up but I knew that we were going to another trial so I got ready fast met my group and we headed out to go watch the trial. When we got then we were going to watch the rape trial but they weren’t starting that until tomorrow so we ended up going to watch a armed robbery trial instead. It was so boring, first of all Nick got yelled at because the judge got mad at him for eating a candy inside the room and people keep giving us mean looks so after about an hour we left and went to Boston City Hall where we talked to Bill Sinnott and about nine other lawyers. they just keep coming in I was like wow nine real lawyer, I have only met one layer my whole life and that is my dads friend lol. so it was pretty cool to be sitting in a room with nine different ones. I found out that if I want to become a divorce layer I have a lot of work I need to do and a lot of different fields I need to study. but I also want to be a sexual defense layer which has a lot or work too. but it is my dream and I really want to do that. I really liked the Boston City Hall, however it wasn’t that nice but it worked I guess. when we left there we went to eat at hooters which was fun and the food was really good and now I’m sitting in a café writing this but I’m going to walk around Boston some more but that’s been my two days on Jua. And my amazing law experiences. I don’t have a general question yet I have many questions but I don’t feel like we should have to have a question my question would be how do I become a lawyer? And nothing else.

BRI

Mio Bloggo Italiano

Aren't there devices that can tell you where they are free wireless points to be found? If I ever live in a city, I'm going to need one of those, as once again, finding free wireless access in Boston is somewhat akin to jumping through a series of flaming hoops. We were wandering around in the North End for some time, and finally found a usable network in the Cafe della Sporta (maybe the fact that I'm mentioning them online will offset the fact that I'm sitting in their Cafe blogging, and not buying anything.

This morning, we went to another court case for a little while. This time it was armed robbery. We saw testimony from the victim, and a police officer who was around. The attorneys weren't kind of dumb this time around, and it was neat.

Then we went to Boston City Hall (which, for the record, is the ugliest building ever concieved by man), and talked with a bunch of people from their legal department (it started out as one lawyer, then three, then five, and it maxed out at nine). It was pretty interesting, talking to lawyers who aren't BMW-driving pinstripe-wearing millionaires, apparently civil service law is rewarding, but not particularly lucrative. It was cool though, we got to find out what sort of legal issues a city can find itself emboiled (is that a word?) in.

I'd love to talk mnore, but there are other people who have to blog and the people who run the Cafe are probably going to kick us out if we don't buy anything.

Sayonara,
_alexander_zero

Tuesday Morning

It's Tuesday morning, around 8.

We didn't really do anything important after checking out the court cases, after which time it was about 3:30. We wandered back to the hostel, hung out for a while, and went out to eat. I think we just went to the Prudential Center. I had a pizza, everyone else, who knows? We wandered around here for a while and then came back around 9.

Since I was pretty tired, I just wanted to go to bed. Of course, I knew that everyone in the junior class felt the same way, and that it wouldn't be noisy or anything: everyone would just go to sleep.

Yeah, right.

Those people were yelling until, and after, lights out. Jimmy said that he was inviting a bunch of people into the room in the middle of the night, but that never happened, thank god. I did manage to get some sleep.

So today, we're going to see some guy at City Hall, and maybe see some more court cases. Interviewing some more random people isn't off the list either.

Ciao,
_alexander_zero

Hi everyone,

So here is my first post in a looonggg line of posts to be posted in the near future. I have actually been trying to write this for about 6 hours now, it's not easy to find free internet in the amazing city of Boston (only my favorite city EVER!). Well thank God for Alex bringing his computer with us to the Hostel because he gets free wireless here. I now don't have to remember absolutely ever minute detail that went down between 4:45 this morning and 9:00 tomorrow night.
As you know we began our day at 4:45am but I'll be honest, thats pretty much when I ended yesterday. Staying with Sam and Bri is definately an experience, there is no such thing as sleep when hangning out with those two girls. I am SO thankful for Mike and the fact that he owns possibly the greatest pillow in the history of pillows, which he let me use, and due to the fact that we sat together on the bus, he was indirectly a part of that great pillow.
Fast forward to 7:11am (yeah I know the exact time, it happens to be the same as my birthday, I know I'm pretty cool) Mike woke me up and the "beautiful" day began. Our first event wasn't schedualed until 10:00am and I would have been perfectly content to cash out in the hostel until then, but no go. We were out the door and on our way by 8:00am. I don't know what might have happend if there hadn't been a Dunkin' Donuts less than a block from the hostel.
We picked up some news papers to read while we drank our coffee, it was so very cliche I was extremely excited, when I happend to glance upon the headline CONDOM BOMBER TELLS HER STORY, well it had to do with the law so of course I didn't hesitate to pick it up a read. I must say it was an interesting read, if you are able to find a copy of the Boston Herald dated December 11, 2006 I highly recommend grabbing a coffee and enjoying a good laugh. After that, coffee in hand, we set out.
We arrived at South Station and had almost an hour to kill so we began our "Person on the Street" interviews. It was a really informative and fun experience. It was interesting to see the varying opinions and who they came from. We kept our interviews diverse and we will be continuing to do "Person on the Street" Interviews throughout the course of JUA, so I will post more on that later.
At 10:00am we went to a law firm where a New Hampton alum was a medium level associate. She was so cool. She was obviously really smart and really nice, she knew many of our teachers (she graduated in 1996) and actually lived in the town over from mine, it turned out we had quite a bit in common. The office was beautiful even the "older sections" if by old she meant nicer than my house than yeah it was really "old". She couldn't really help to much with my essential question because she doesn't really have much to do with the media, she always has a go between.
We then went to Dick's Last Resort for lunch which we may end up doing again tonight but Bri and I have a different plan. We had so much free time because we were unable to procure a tour at the John Adams courthouse. But no matter, we had fun and we were able to get some information about it from the front desk.
We then went on to the city criminal courthouse, but happend to arrive during an hour long recess and thus furthered our free time. We got a list of trials in progress and chose one which appeared intersting although we couldn't really find out any facts about the case. Boy were we wrong. It was possibly the most boring experience of my life. So ex-crack cochaine dealer had killed some crack addict who stole from him and shot at his friend "who he loved" and his friends girlfriend and baby 9 YEARS AGO. It was kind of hilarious because everything he said contradicted what he said in 1998 when the event actually happend. So basically, that guy was screwed.
So I finally got Clark to let us leave at 4:00pm and we got back to the hostel about a half hour ago, I really wanted to take a nap but instead I am doing this and now I only have 15mins until I have to meet my group to leave for dinner.

Well I guess I'll talk to you all later.

~Ali

Now I Can Finish

Read my other post first because this is Part II

Well, that was the first time I've ever been in a real court case. Good lord, it was boring. If I ever become a lawyer, I'm definitely going to be the kind of lawyer that sits in the offices of the law firm and does research, because at least then you can zone out or play Pac-Man on your laptop if you wanted to.

I'm not sure what the law is regarding talking about court cases in progress, so I'll leave out any major details, but basically, this guy got hauled up on murder charges. Apparently though, we missed the day of all the testimony about the murder, and we were treated to an hour and a half of the prosecution lawyers asking him about shoot-ups that occured some years ago. I can't say he gave the most convincing answers: apparently, he didn't remember what gun he had, whether it was an automatic, whether he used the whole clip, or whether he hit anyone, but he did remember the exact motion he used to jump out of the car. As Dr. Evil would say: Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Anyway, that particular experience really didn't help me to answer my essential question, but it was interesting (even though it was boring).

Before we went there, we went to a huge law firm were a New Hampton alum worked. That was pretty cool: being New Hampshire bumkins, we were all dazzled by the enormous building with all the fancy modern art inside and shiny tables. (We actually got yelled at by security for not going in the visitor's entrace. It was funny.) Anyway, I learned a couple interesting things regarding my Question, such as:

• Most corporations use law firms as a go-between between them and their lobbyists in Washington. The law firms keep it legal, mostly.
• Large firms charge large hourly rates for their services, as opposed to solo practitioners, who mostly work on a contingency basis (i.e., if I don't win, you don't have to pay me)
• Basically, this means that only big businesses and very rich private individuals can afford the services of a large law firm
• Very few civil cases involving businesses have a grand jury: most times it's just a judge. Also, it's usually a judge specifically for business matters, to help eliminate the possibility of bias.
• The main difference between large law firms and solo individuals is the amount of manpower that can be devoted to a case, not the quality of the lawyers. Big cases like patent violations need a lot more people than small civil suits, because there is so much more info to go over

The problem is, all this info seems to both answer "Yes" and "No" for my essential question. Oh, well. More will come.

- _alexander_zero

P.S. I'd post pictures, but we don't have a sync cable for the camera. They'll come later, when we get back.

In Boston

We have arrived

I would've made this post sooner, except finding free wireless access in Boston is a nightmare. Like five or six times, I would get connected to a network that said "Free Wireless" or something, only to have it find out that either:

• It actually wasn't free


• It wouldn't work... god only knows why

I think something is messing up my computer... when I connect to a wirless network now, it automatically redirects me to "The Pulse of South Station", even though that's not my homepage... weird.

But anyway...

Getting up in time to get going was not fun. Paul E. was playing Counter-Strike until ungodly hours, so sleep was at a minimum. I didn't sleep on the bus... I never can. If it hadn't been for a very powerful infusion of coffee as soon as we arrived at a Dunkin' Donuts, I wouldn't be able to type these words now.

So... on to business. After eating breakfast, we wandered around South Station for a bit. I asked people some various questions about the law (see my comment on the Hans' first post), to the extent of: do you think the rich have favor in the legal system, and do you think you, as an ordinary citizen, could win a case against a large organization if you wanted to?

I got a varying degree of answers. The custodian said no, he wouldn't have much chance against a huge organization in a legal suit, while a businessman said yes. The Japanese tourists said yes, while the lady selling newspapers said no. At the risk of stating the obvious, I suppose your perception of the fairness of America's legal system depends on your socio-economic standing.

I have more to say, but we need to hurry up and go to a murder trial. Will check back with you all later. Cheers.

Our Essential Questions

Here is the first post from our group!

These are the quesitons we'll be studying in Boston.