11.11 am

The assignment has finally arrived. That one. The memo which will consume most of my working hours for the next month, at least. The big one. The one that helps us figure out if we go ahead with the case or not. And I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

This, I think, is the prime example of why force feeding us the information we needed to write the memos/briefs in LRW/WOA is problematic. Sure, I know what the structure should look like. I can CRuPAC with the best of them. Which means I've got a great skeleton outline, set up all pretty with headers that will feed right into a table of contents. (It only took three hours of frustration on the brief assignment to figure that one out.) The problem, I fear, is that I'm not entirely sure what to put in between those headers.

It doesn't help that there really isn't any applicable law. So I've got to write a memo gunning for the law that's most favorable to our client. Not an interpretation of the law. But the actual law itself. Which, theoretically, would make this a breeze - just go through the books and pick the law I want. Not so easy. Because although the law we don't want to use (municipal law) is written down, the law we do want (international law) is not. There isn't even stare decisis in international law, so whatever cases I do find that are favorable to my client are persuasive at best.

It's going to be a wickedly exciting memo to write.