Pupillage statistics: London v Provincial

Interestingly, it turns out one of my pupillage providers is less competitive than I had anticipated.

They have just sent me an email telling me that my form has been printed and who will be considering it - which is a nice touch in itself as it gives a warm fuzzy glow of positive progress before the inevitable rejection - but they have also been kind enough to tell people the odds.

There aree roughly 250 applications of whom they will interview 80 people.

Perhaps it's because this is the first time I've applied to London, but I'm pleasantly surprised. I get the impression that regional chambers tend to interview only about 10% of applicants. Whilst one of the reasons my London friends have far more interviews than me is no doubt their excellent CVs (including things like FRU, which we in the -impoverished - 'dark satanic mill' - cities of the North students can only dream of), perhaps part of the discrepancy is because London chambers interview more candidates.

Of course, I am basing this all on a single application - but I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this one.

Or, of course, just plan scandal and rumour!

New addition to blogroll

Pupilpedia's blog has now been added to the blog roll.

I firmly believe he needs a new name (and PP just doesn't sound good out loud). Perhaps on the PP theme, I want to call him Pingu (no, I don't know the link either - it's just a worrying insight into my mind. Take an aspirin, it'll be over soon!).

Thoughts?

SOAS timetable (provisional) and travel details

Below is a provisional timetable and travel information for SOAS IV 2008.

Friday night:
Arrive from 5pm and register
Social is from 8pm.
(There aren't any rounds on the Friday)

Saturday:
9am-9:30: registration
9:30: first round is announced
11am: second round is announced
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Third round is announced
15:00: Fourth round is announced
17:30: Fifth round is announced (closed adjudication)
19:00 - Social

Sunday
9:30-10:15: Re-register and breakfast
10:20 - Semi-final announced
12:30- Lunch
13:30 - ESL final announced*
15:30 - Final announced
18:00-1830: Results and prizes
1900- Go home

*We hope to run an ESL final, but this is subject to there being a sufficient number of ESL teams.

This is all provisional and may be subject to change. However, the start and finish times for the day should all be correct.

A map of where SOAS is can be found here. More information can be found on SOAS's website, here.

Muphry's Law

Muphry’s Law (no, not Murphy’s). Muphry’s law states that “if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”

Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: “any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror”.

“McKean’s Law” (after Verbatim editor Erin McKean):
Call it McKean’s Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.

“Skitt’s Law” (after alt.usage.english contributor “Skitt”):
Skitt’s Law, a corollary of Murphy’s Law, variously expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself” or “the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.”

Courtesy of posters from the Freakonomics blog

Blog list addition - marginal revolution.

I've added Marginal Revolution to the blog list as Ive whilst I've read it fairly freqeuntly over the past year or so, I suddenly have found myself on there daily for the past few weeks.



Megan McArdl often references them, as has comment central



(sory bout any an all typos, mid week middle class binge drinking means another bottle down...


edits o follow tomorrow.)

Away

Hello my darlings!

I am off to the airport in less than half an hour. I have set it up so that some posts will come through over the next few days, but my apologies that I won't necessarily be able to reply to them should you comment,

Feel free to comment any way :)

Muchos Amores,

MM

Lack of posts...

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, by the way. I've got re-obsessed with the West Wing.

Dramatis Personae

This blog seems to have started as a purely debating blog, moved swiftly onto currant affairs and has more recently become much more personal. Whilst many of you know me in real life, for those that don't, it seems apt to give a little information about the people I mention on here, and I'm likely to mention more in the future.

Miss Middle of Manchester - me. But my ego wouldn't let me leave it off. (Former) BVC student, currently unemployed, debating geek and CA of two future IVs next term.

The Boy - Miss Middle of Manchester's boyfriend/partner. Cohabitation is a pain when it comes to terms of referral! He is a __________ who works just south of Manchester. Expert on Excel and all other overly geeky computer programmes. also, currently my only means of financial support

The Fish - they die at intervals. I'm thinking of setting up a label to mark their deaths

Andropov - was a former member of both my original SGS group as well as my options group.

The Ginger - Also known as Al (formally known to me as Alex. It's all terribly confusing!) when he replies to posts. Used to debate lots, now suspect he only reads this blog because he wants to win the IVs which I set the motions for :)

MC + A: MC and A are actually two people, but seeing as we gossip together most of the time, can usually be referred to together. Excellent sources of salacious gossip. They were in my former SGS group and, alongside Andropov, are the only people I actually still talk to.

The Aunt - whilst I have 3 Aunts, I suspect I'll be blogging whilst I'm out in Texas this summer. She's the aunt who lives out there who I'll be staying with. I don't know why I've renamed her as I call her usually by a childhood nickname anyway!

More people will be added where necessity requires....

Trauma! Upset! Panic! Disaster!

All of the above.

My computer died last night.

It had been making funny whirring noises from the space where the hard drive lives all day.

I thought I might get away with it because it had made the same funny noises once before, a month ago. But alas, it was not to be.

The final straw for the poor thing was me trying to back up all my files: Starts ok, so I go away and come back 5 minutes later to blue screen of death. When I exit blue screen, computer has decided hard drive doesn't exist.

I'm wondering whether to take it down to the police, tell them that there's kiddie porn on it and then get them to lift whatever data remains. Suspect it might be a somewhat high risk strategy though.

So now I'm on the crappy desktop (yes, we're the house that has 3 complete computers in it and various parts for other computers knocking around, whilst only two of us live here) which actually belongs to The Boy. Have spent the morning merrily 'tidying' his files, deleting all of his irrelevant bookmarks, replacing them with far more relevant book marks.

Firefox 3.0

Just downloaded the new Firefox 3.0.

Love the new zoom function. Ironically, was looking for it yesterday on the old version and couldn't find it - think Mozilla corp. is reading my mind!

Not yet so sure about the 'guess what you mean' address bar. I can see how it would be useful if you can't remember the name of a site, but if I type in "thi" it used to take me to the main page of this blog. Now it makes a million suggestions and I have to scroll. Firefox say that it does learn your preferences over time, so maybe this'll fix soon. If it learns quickly, I can definitely see how it would be useful.

____

UPDATE: actually, it's already learned. This time when I typed it, the main page was the first option. Clever browser :-)

The end...?

Now finished the BVC, and I'm not quite sure how I feel.

When I handed in my last piece of work on Friday, part of it was relief, but for the first time in my life, my next move isn't planned. Thoughout school, the plan was to go to the next year. In my last year of school, university. From university, law conversion. From law conversion, BVC. From BVC where I don't have a pupillage....?

I'm going to apply to Legal Practice Clerks as at least it's money for speaking and seems to be a reasonably flexible job. Plus, you can get time knocked off your pupillage which sounds good to me!

I guess for me it's also a bit more weird as all of the friends I made through university and last year and now upping sticks and going to London (and a couple of other cities, too) so it further adds to the feeling of limbo.

Very glad that the people I met on the BVC are still going to be around Manchester.

Wordcount update

Have now virtually finished sex discrimination (I just need to check the provisions which relate to interest), have written 2200 words. That's an awful lot slower than I usually write, but I'm researching the subject from scratch as I go along.

If anyone knows how to reference ET cases that are unreported, I would love you forever if you messaged me to explain!

Oh, and the two hour long trip to IKEA to buy bookcases this evening probably didn't help. Planning to move desk around tomorrow... Procrastination, what procrastination?!

Will start (and finish) race discrimination tomorrow. I hope. Otherwise, I'll be baking until kingdom come and they're threatening to close our local post office so I'll have difficulty posting them too!

Off to bed now, yawn, yawn, yawn....

ZZZZZ.....

Texas (weird and wonderful)

This summer, I'm going to Texas for a couple of weeks. I have the first week planned (messing around on a boat, mainly) but for the second week wanted to do something a little bit different.

The Boy (as it seems all the blawging fashion to rename real life people) wants to go and see weird and wonderful things, which I'm quite up for. We were hoping Texas would have the biggest ball of twine but apparently that honour belongs to either Minnesota, Wisconsin or Kansas. Any ideas on something similar to do/find? Quite honestly, we want the mini-road trip as much as anything.

Hmm, I wonder where the world's biggest rocking chair is...


Anyway, if any of you wonderful people have any suggests, we would be grateful for them!

Twitter

Well, whilst this isn't technically a blawg (too little law on here for that!), it seems all the coolest blawgers in school have started to use twitter.

Never let it be said I don't shameless copy others, follow like a sheep and take advantage of all procrastinating activities in the face of examination.

If you hate it, do let me know!

Normal Service

Sorry about the lack of posts, I was in the middle of nowhere for a few days over the bank holiday.

Normal service (should) resume later today.

Geeky Analytics II

In keeping with the geekiness of yesterday's analysis of your comments, the top ten searches that get people here are:

1.	http://thissideofthehouse.blogspot.com/
2.	sorry but your soul just died
3.	olpas
4.	european abortion limits
5.	sorry, but your soul just died
6.	ciaran prendeville
7.	olpas hints
8.	"alex deane" "conservative"
9.	"gayan samarasinghe"
10.	"kyalo burt-fulcher"

The first 7 I can understand. Number 8 confuses me somewhat as I didn't think I'd written about Alex at all. WTF are the last two about?

Any suggestions will be welcomed!

Dear and Darling Readers

My dear and darling readers,

I'm worried.

I've just been looking over the number of comments posted on various posts and the top three, in order, are:

1st: Bouncy Castles
2nd: Ananas/Pineapples (a debate on etymology)
3rd: Abortion

Now, I can only think of one explanation for this: My views are so wonderfully clear and thought out that the only issues upon which I cannot persuade you to change your minds are on the less serious ones such as children's toys and the etymology of South American fruits.

Ahem, better go and get another glass of wine, methinks.

Pictures on blog posts?

Pictures on blog posts, aye or nay?

OLPAS and the final two choices...

Doing OLPAS applications at the moment.

Not all chambers are in OLPAS, 4 in Manchester, 2 in Liverpool, 4 in Leeds... and you get to apply to twelve.

Is it worrying that I'm filling up the final two spaces on my form by just applying to London chambers which have taken on debaters that I know and like?

For each set you apply to, you have to write 150 words saying 'why them'. Unless a person has done a mini-pupillage at a particular set, there's really not a lot more to write. "I want to apply to you because you are in the area of the country I want to stay in, do the areas of law I want to do and I figure you might just give me a pupillage" doesn't quite cut it.

Surely it would be far more realistic for people to list the 12, but only have people write anything if they've done a mini there (and that could be done by ticking a box, to be honest).

Yet another way the BVC-pupillage-tenancy system could be improved....




Joke:
Q:How many members of the Bar Council does it take to change lightbulb?

A: Change?!

May 15th

In line with the popular 'because we can' flash mob attitude, for those of you who haven't seen, there is a plan afoot whereby on May15th 2008, about 220,000 people will panic buy carrots. In the UK, this looks to be between 50,000-100,000 people.

I urge everyone to join in this enterprise to pay homage to the absurd and surreal.