I wasn't really planning on updating again tonight, but I just got home from trial practice and I'm wired.

We only rehearse two nights a week, which in my opinion is not enough, which is why we go for four to five hours and only get through half the case. Each side only has two witnesses, so that means that tonight we got through the direct and cross of the plaintiff and the direct and cross of the plaintiff's expert.

In a little under five hours.

It's exhausting, but then when it's time to go, my head is still thinking and planning and assimilating all the good advice we got from our professor/judge. I didn't even have anything to do tonight (when we aren't presenting the case as lawyers, we act as witnesses for the other team, and I'm the defendant's expert, so we didn't get anywhere near my testimony) and I'm still worn out.

And there's a problem, which is that out of the eight of us, my partner seems to be the least interested in what's going on. At this stage in the game, we're still all very involved in helping each other develop the case, except for my co-counsel. He sat a couple of rows back rather than in the jury box with the rest of the people who were witnesses tonight, and didn't say a word the entire evening. He barely looked like he was paying attention, which he should have been, since all suggestions that go to the other plaintiff team apply to us also.

It's like he's not taking this seriously, and that bothers me. We've been told over and over again that our purpose here should not be focused on the competition itself, and I understand that. Our primary goal is to develop our trial skills, not win a contest. But still... I'd like to at least make a decent showing, and I can't, not with a co-counsel who isn't just as dedicated to being as prepared as possible.

Just as an example, out of the eight of us, he's the only one who hasn't broken up his case file into a notebook, which is what you're supposed to do. He's still got random pieces of paper flying around with his examinations on them, and is still flipping through the record with the staple in the upper right hand corner, while the rest of us have at least three-hole-punched the record into a binder with dividers separating the depositions, the stipulations, the exhibits, and so on.

I'm just concerned because he and I are going to try the case in front of a hard-ass professor next week, and I don't want this guy next to me shuffling pieces of notebook paper and flipping through a stapled record. Incompetence by association.

But, for all that... I love this. I love taking this case and getting my teeth into it and hashing out all the legal angles and arguing about admissibility of evidence and making jokes to break the tedium and having meetings after the "judge" leaves to figure out who's going to go get the exhibits blown up and mounted and who's going to call our advisor and whether we really ought to think about adding a weekend session.

And it kills me how much I love it, when, pre-law school, I thought litigation was somewhere near the ninth circle of hell when ranking where I'd want to be. I would hear people talk about being a trial attorney and I'd shudder.

And now, here I am. Not only do I like it, but...

... I may actually be good at it.