Author Archives: lynnylchan

Lynn Reviews – LED Makeup Mirror

What it is: a rectangular mirror, 16 cm by 27 cm, with 2 strips of LED lights down the long edges. Plastic frame, powered by 4 AA batteries or a micro-USB port.

Looks like: http://www.lazada.sg/adjustable-light-led-makeup-mirror-make-up-mirror-36-built-inlightsusb-and-battery-dual-power-source-black-white-intl-18954246.html?ff=1

Price: I paid $25+

Review: bright LEDs in a neutral white colour so you can judge your makeup accurately. Dimmable lights but I always use it on max brightness. Comes with a 10x magnification add-on but I find 10x to be a bit much – I have to go up real close for the image to come into focus, by which time I can only see one eye. The add-on is meant for detail work but I don’t really need to be so up close and personal with my wrinkles.

Verdict: it works, and it’s decent value for money. Would recommend, would buy again.

 

NUS Law survival guide

Congratulations on making it to NUS Law (or commiserations, if you actually wanted to go elsewhere but had to settle). Your time here will be much easier if you don’t do what I did. My hard-won lessons, below:

Law Camp/Orientation

I didn’t go, and neither did any of my friends, but that’s because we’re old and weary and we also had to serve our notice periods at work. Go, make friends, and you will at least not have to sit in lectures alone. If you don’t go, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, you’re going to be seeing these people nearly every day in school, and there are extracurricular groups to join.

Pre-reading

There are some books that are recommended for incoming law students, because law school is so different from whatever came before. These are more like friendly guides – a Lonely Planet guidebook for law school, if you will. For a US-centric view, try “Getting to Maybe”, and for a UK classic, “Learning the Law” by Glanville Williams. I only recently got my hands on “Learning the Law” and I regret not reading it earlier (I learned about it at the end of year 1). Also, to get you used to reading cases: The Singapore Law Watch and Supreme Court websites, so you can read judgments and get a feel for things.

Textbooks

Buy one for each subject. Just one. You won’t have time to read more than one. Get the entire set from seniors at an eye-watering price, or hold on to find out which ones your profs recommend. Also an alternative: Book Depository, for textbooks from UK writers, and Carousell or other used-book databases. This will also give you a good gauge of the secondhand prices.

Also, it’s not compulsory to buy textbooks. I had no choice but to buy my Criminal Law textbooks because the profs referred to it all the time, but this was not really the case for Torts and Contract. Textbooks can be heavy-going when you’re a freshman, and a friendly writing style can be more important than the eminence of the author. In the end, what matters is that you get value out of the book, and there’s no value in a book you never open.

Note-taking

Some people swear by taking notes in longhand with a fountain pen, others type furiously to capture every nuance of the prof’s words. I’ve tried both, and frankly it doesn’t matter as long as you read them after the lesson, read them again before doing the tutorial assignments, and then one more time to distill them down into your exam cheatsheets.

Outlines/muggers

The main advantage of being close to your orientation group is that your generous seniors will have compiled muggers for you – basically their notes from the year before, condensed and exam-ready. Some people take a hard line against muggers, seeing them as the equivalent of baby food, while others become connoisseurs of which set is the best for which prof’s class. I prefer to make my own notes because I use the Cornell method, but muggers can get you out of a tight spot if you’re not prepared. A caveat though – if you don’t update the muggers you get, you may recite an error or mention a case that isn’t on your syllabus any more, at which point the prof will know that you’re cribbing. The profs know about muggers and they try to discourage us, but like movie piracy, it’s something (nearly) everyone is doing.

Workload

You have 15 contact hours a week. That means 15 hours of instruction, whether in a lecture, seminar or tutorial group. To put things in perspective, that’s 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Seems light, until you remember that the faculty’s rule of thumb is 3 hours of preparation for every hour of instruction. That’s 45 hours of prep on top of your 15 contact hours, for a total of 60 hours of work a week.

That’s not terrible, by the way. Working adults routinely clock 50-hour weeks, and lawyers definitely clock more than 60 hours a week during crunch time. Might as well get used to the grind now.

I never did 60 hours a week, actually. But you don’t want to be me, so pick your favourite table at the library and settle in.

Tutorials

Show up prepared. Read the cases (or at least the headnotes). Think through the questions. Coming from a liberal arts background where you could just improvise your answer, I found tutorials frightening at first. But you, unlike me, are a hardworking, conscientious student and you will prepare for tutorials, because this is where most of the value of law school lies – understanding that there may be many ways to look at a problem, and sussing out which approach your prof prefers. After all, we have exams to pass.

Exams

Ah, exams. They come in many forms in law school. You can write essays, type furiously with the clock ticking away, do a take-home exam that gives you 6 hours to churn out an essay or two, or do a research paper. Okay, so the last one is an assessment and not an exam, but when it counts for more than 50% of your final grade, it’s just as important and scary.

E-exams took some getting used to. In my undergrad days, I spent significant time drafting my answers to get the flow of ideas just right, because we had to write by hand and waiting for correction fluid to dry was a drain on precious time. With e-exams, that goes straight out the window. Points can be rearranged or edited instantly, so meticulous drafting is replaced by terse bullet points just so I’m sure I didn’t miss out details. I took my last handwritten exam in April 2016. I don’t miss them.

For some modules, like LARC (Legal Analysis and Communication) and Trial Advocacy, there is a final “practical exam” in the form of a moot, or a mock trial. Basically, this is your chance to play lawyer and make submissions to a “court”, usually made up of your profs. It is nerve-wracking, time-consuming, and some people actually enjoy this so much that they do moots as an extracurricular. You get all types in law school.

Moots

Mooters are the rock stars of law school. Being a mooter means standing up in front of a crowd, making arguments, and impressing the socks off everyone. Not everyone is cut out to be a mooter – some of us really don’t like public speaking (not all lawyers are chatterboxes). And it’s common knowledge that while law school skews towards churning out litigators (hence the focus on moots), legal practice needs all types. Just find your niche and make the most of it.

Well-being

When I was an undergrad, discussion of mental health issues was practically nonexistent. Maybe we were just more relaxed back then, I can’t tell. But now, mental health is a big issue on campus and we are always reminded that there’s a counsellor available if we need help. Law school is probably an especially tough place for mental health, because the stress is higher and it can be hard to tell if you just need some time to get used to the pace, or if something is really wrong. Also, everyone else will tell you how stressed they are, which normalizes something that might be a symptom. You know yourself best – if you’re manifesting symptoms of anxiety or depression, seek help.

Law school is filled with Type-A sorts who let off steam by crushing each other at foosball or table tennis. As a more aesthetic type, I prefer walks in the gardens around the campus, or calligraphy. Your studies are important, but your hobbies will keep you sane and allow you to decompress so you can study better.

Remember, law school is tough but you’re tougher. All the best!

They say having too many choices is a good problem to have. That may be true but it just feels like I won prizes I can’t now claim because I can’t fit them into my packed summer schedule.

I was at Uniqlo buying another set of black-and-white when my phone pinged with the sound of school email. SAL had assigned me to a criminal lawyer for the criminal practice internship. Unfortunately, it overlapped by one week with the CLAS internship which is overseen by the scary prof and hence I can’t shift my CLAS internship start date (nor would I, because then it would clash with the litigation internship).

Arrrrggggh! One of the most noted lawyers in his field agreeing to let me shadow him for 2 weeks and I had to reply “no” to the offer. There was a “Remarks” field allowing me to explain why, so I suggested alternative dates. One of those alternatives will result in my missing the Mauritius trip if it goes ahead as planned, but Mauritius will always be there, and legal internships are time-sensitive.

Also, Mrs Lee Suet-Fern agreed to an email interview for the Law School Companion, and I’m in charge, so I had to do my research on questions to ask her – repeating questions or asking her mundane ones shows we can’t be bothered to do research or are just really stupid. Her specialty is corporate law, and it would seem completely at odds to me that she would find such a dry subject interesting. As I read on, however, I started to understand why she enjoyed it so much. It’s not about the subject matter being companies and securities and rules. She enjoyed the intellectual challenge of solving problems in this field, and I suppose I need to shift my mindset – that of seeing corporate law as another set of tools, rather than the dry, somewhat impersonal aspect of law that it seems to be when compared to criminal practice or family law.

Powered by Journey.

Broken Clouds, 29°C

17 Lorong Kilat

Exams are over! And somehow I’ve signed up for more than my fair share of pro bono hours – I secured an internship with the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme which would already fulfil my required 20 hours, but then I was also approved for the Syariah Court Friends programme and that’s another 30+ hours in the bag… And right after the exam, as we were heading out to lunch, the careers office called and said they were nominating me for the coveted litigation internship. I get to shadow a lawyer in court! Fun times, and I suppose it makes up for the disappointment of not securing a “real” law firm internship.

I’m fat and ugly and hopelessly unfit, and also awkward as hell now that I don’t bother to hide it, but I wouldn’t switch places with anyone else in the world. Life is good.

(okay maybe if she were a slimmer, prettier version of me with the same personality characteristics, I’d swap)

Powered by Journey.

What does it mean to find your people?

Yesterday, I attended a beach party mostly populated by “internet types” i.e. people who say more online than in real life. I’m sure they weren’t mainstream in the usual sense, but for all that they seemed to really enjoy each other’s company, without the need to feel held back by politeness.

I guess I really envied them that – the freedom to be themselves, comfortable in their own skins without feeling the need to impress anyone. I wish I could do that.

Powered by Journey.

I’ve been thinking about how marketing/advertising exploits our deep-seated insecurities in order to sell us things. This actually began with a dating app called Ivory, when I had an insight that people’s negative reactions to it were just manifestations of their insecurities of being judged as not being elite enough to be invited into the exclusive circle of “ambitious high-achievers”.

And now, because they hit the right buttons – insecurity about social status, insecurity about being forever alone – they’re getting column inches and FB posts. And I looked at the people reacting, like the animal experiments we used to study in Psych 1101E. Not quite like Pavlov’s dogs, not quite pigeons in Skinner boxes… this was a fear reaction.

And I resolved to be more aware of when a fear response is being elicited from me, when my insecurities are being exploited for capitalism. The question to ask now, when considering a purchase, is not “do I need this?” but rather “what problem does this solve?“. Let’s walk through the steps:

Chicken nuggets. They solve the problem of hunger, which is a basic need. I guess the follow-up question is “is there a better way of solving this problem” but my bad dietary choices are a matter for another day.

New lipstick. Solves the problem of not having a matte lipstick in that colour family. Which solves the problem of my being ugly, which will hopefully solve the problem of being forever alone. I guess the desire for deep meaningful relationships is a basic need, but the lipstick is too remote a cause. Do not buy – or at least, be honest about what a mere lipstick can do in terms of helping you feel better about yourself.

Powered by Journey.

I was thinking about how I’ve changed since I entered law school. I think I’m more assertive (naturally), and I think I’ve become more curious about my fellow humans.

I was looking at the ice-cream uncle who has his van at the Chun Tin carpark and I thought maybe someday I should go interview him, ask him how he got started selling ice cream and why he picked this spot (he wasn’t here before).

And I realised that the old pre-law me might never have thought about doing something like that, I certainly never thought about interviewing strangers. I think part of the reason for the change is that there is no escaping your fellow humans in law. For all our reputations as dusty nerds spending all day in the library, law students are actually continually grappling with the failures, brilliance and general interestingness of humanity, case by case. There is no escaping the underlying humanity running through our work. There is no law without humans anyway, who would a hermit rule? Or sue? Or marry, or divorce, or make and break contracts with?

Maybe all this is why lawyers are so fun (and often challenging) to hang out with 🙂

Powered by Journey.

Advice for incoming Year 1s

  1. You will be told that the first semester is a grade-free semester. All this means is that you spend December studying for exams in the first week of Sem 2. Do not slack off.
  2. Assiduously write up case summaries, legal principles and rules, interpretation canons etc. You will be consumed with work from your Legal Writing Skills course, but those are skills you need to develop with time, and you also need to cram Contract Law inside your brain, because the exams are closed-book.
  3. You will not understand the legal principles at first. It’s like building a jigsaw puzzle. You know that at the end, it’s supposed to resemble some basic grounding in contract law, but right now you have bits and pieces. Persevere. The big picture will come to you.
  4. Torts is a bit easier in that I found it more intuitive, but you still need to know your tests for duty of care, remoteness, causation… that’s what hypothetical questions are for. Find a fact pattern in your case readings that fits the given hypo, apply apply apply.
  5. I might be burned at some stakes for saying this, but CCAs don’t matter. They’re a proxy for showing that you are a well-rounded human being, and there are lots of other ways outside of NUS Law that can showcase this. Also, Pro Bono Group is only worth joining in Year 2 when your pro bono hours are actually counted towards the mandatory 20-hour quota. Joining in Year 1 may give you a leg up in finagling a position in Year 2, but it’s time that you could spend elsewhere. Elsewhere studying.
  6. Seriously, don’t take “grade-free semester” at face value. You will regret it. Work just as hard as if you were still graded at the end of the sem, BECAUSE YOU ARE.
  7. Don’t make so much noise in the library. Or elsewhere. The seniors hate it. (I’ve pinpointed the Year 1 tendency to travel in packs as the proximate cause)
  8. Thai food at the Summit is pretty good. Drinks stall is a necessity and also pretty decent at remembering what faces go with what special orders. Be nice to them, the rest of the campus loves them and wants them to stay after the next round of vendor contracts is up.
  9. Keep a (virtual) sticky note somewhere on your computer to write down things you liked or disliked about tutors or lecturers. Student feedback is your only time to point out their flaws to them anonymously, and having details helps you write constructive criticism instead of just rating them badly for what seems to be no reason at all. Conversely, don’t be shy to tell them that you enjoyed their lesson or that they cleared up something that had always muddled you – teachers live for moments like those.
  10. Sometimes, it feels as if the deadlines will never end – you finish one memo only to have to start on a presentation and there’s a CCA event coming so you have to attend a meeting for that and oh my gahd will it ever end – rest assured that, the nature of time being what it is, the end will come and you will have to sit your exams, regardless. What you do in the time between now and the exams, that’s up to you. You can spend it stressing and complaining, or just getting down to the work, noses to grindstones… We just get through it one day at a time, and eventually we find that as we lob completed deadlines over our shoulder, the burden somehow seems lighter and we’re fired up for the final stretch. TL;DR: one day at a time, really. That was basically how I survived A-levels, and it’s what I do now.
  11. Start applying for internships early. Like, one semester ahead early. I sent applications in late February only to be told that some firms had already met their internship quota for summer (and I can confirm this was not an alternative way of rejecting me). This isn’t to say, however, that internships are a must-have. For undergrads in their first year, y’all can afford to take one summer off to go on vacation. I only have 2 summers in which to fish for a training contract, so the time pressure is greater for me. But don’t get so hung up on internships that you forget to enjoy uni life, and that includes summer breaks. It’s more important to be a human.

Koh Lanta Day 6

The songthaew picks me up right on the dot at 7.10 a.m. and in 13 minutes, we are on a speedboat departing the pier. The boat ride does take exactly 15 mins, as promised on the website.

The van driver maintains a speed of 100 kmh and we reach the airport in an hour, probably to the minute.

And then I have to wait for the customs people to start work at 9 a.m. before I can head to my gate. Krabi airport has 2 terminals and a total of 7 gates. Seriously, this is why Changi is the top airport in the world…

Koh Lanta Day 4

It is Loy Krathong today. The resort has laid out cut banana stems, banana leaves and a variety of flowers for us to make our krathongs.

As I watched my little krathong float away, I had some thoughts:
When I released it in the shallows, the returning waves knocked it over. I had to go into deeper, less turbulent waters where the returning waves pushed it out to sea instead of hindering it.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.