【Episode 15 – Someone Like Me (2)】
“I heard Sujeong attends Parsons?”
“Yes.”
“Goeun is crazy about fashion, food, cafes with a nice atmosphere, things like that. And I heard she told Sujeong to get in touch since she knows a lot of places like that.”
“Ah—yes.”
“I mean, I’d be glad if my wife, who doesn’t know anyone here, made some friends. But I was wondering if Sujeong might be taking a casual remark too seriously and making things burdensome for no reason. What’s your relationship with Sujeong? You two seem quite close. If so, just be honest with me. If it’s a hassle, I’ll drop a hint to my wife.”
That my sister-in-law and Sujeong would become friends.
I hadn’t expected it.
“It won’t be like that. Even though she’s sociable, she’s not the type to force herself to meet people she dislikes.”
“Really? Then that’s a relief. Still, my wife might be making a fuss over a throwaway polite remark. When you have time, Heon, could you casually ask about it?”
“Yes, I will.”
Fate truly is mysterious.
It wasn’t as if Sujeong and my sister-in-law hadn’t met before.
Of course, back then, perhaps it was because they had just met at a school event and hadn’t had a chance to talk, but to think the situation would unfold like this just because things had changed.
For a moment, I wondered, “What could this mean?” but decided not to think too deeply.
Her life was hers, and I had plenty of other things to worry about.
“Back to what we were talking about earlier—I saw the email you sent, and it looks like we need to submit a legal brief first. Right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
---*---
Of the hundreds of law schools in America, only fourteen belong to the top tier. And of the five universities considered the “top of the top,” two were located in Manhattan, New York.
New York, 453 West 116th Street.
One of them was a stately building guarded by the late Jacques Lipchitz’s sculpture, “Bellerophon Taming Pegasus.”
As soon as she entered the Columbia Law School building, Jennifer Lin perched on a corner of the lobby and took off her shoes.
She had thought she’d applied it properly, but the bandage had fallen off on the way.
“Hi, Jen~.”
“Hi, Lawrence.”
“That’s still pretty bad.”
A scraped wound on her heel. It wasn’t bleeding, but the red, raw flesh still looked painful.
It was a wound she’d gotten walking in high heels from Tribeca to East Harlem during the blackout last weekend.
“I’m fine.”
“It looks like it hurts quite a bit. Do you have any medicine?”
Instead of answering, Jennifer waved the bandage she was holding.
The moment she applied new bandages to both heels and tried to head to the civil law classroom with Lawrence, Claire, who was taking the same class, entered the building.
“Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Lawrence.”
“Hey~.”
“Hi, Claire.”
The three exchanged greetings and headed to the second floor where the classroom was.
“So? Did you apologize properly?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.”
“Apologize? Apologize for what?”
A few days ago, Jennifer had had lunch with Claire.
While chatting about this and that, the incident that had occurred the previous Friday came up, and Jennifer asked Claire how best to apologize.
“What mistake did you make?”
“I made someone wait.”
“Ah—that. If it’s that, can’t you just say sorry and buy them a cup of coffee or something?”
“It was a bit too long to let pass with just that.”
“How long did you make them wait?”
“All night.”
“What? You made them wait all night? Why? How?”
“There was someone who was supposed to move into our apartment last Friday. But······.”
That was how Claire came to hear why Jennifer’s heels had ended up scraped raw.
“You did make him wait a long time. But the situation was unavoidable. There were accidents all over Manhattan because of the blackout. And didn’t that guy seem understanding? Then isn’t that enough?”
Jennifer had thought much the same inwardly, but somehow she felt as though she hadn’t apologized properly.
Without so much as a frown, he had been so cool about it, telling her not to worry before heading into Takashi’s room.
After that, she hadn’t run into him until Monday morning. He seemed to be sleeping the whole time. When he was awake, she was asleep.
Because of that, it had been glossed over, but strangely, it kept weighing on her mind.
“If it really bothers you, why don’t you have a meal together or something?”
“A meal?”
“Yeah. He’s a guy, right? Guys completely melt if you buy them nachos and beer.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That’s the kind of animal men are.”
After hearing the whole story, Lawrence nodded in agreement with the advice Claire had given.
“That’s right. Most guys would get over it with nachos and beer. And if a charming woman like Jennifer is buying, I bet he’d be happy even if you bought him a Cold 49.”
“What? Hohoho! Lawrence, that’s not true.”
“Why not? It’s true. He’d probably say yes to organic non-alcoholic too.”
Cold 49 was a malt-flavored beverage with an 8% alcohol content, a beer substitute mainly drunk by broke high schoolers or the poor in America.
Claire giggled at Lawrence’s words, delivered with exaggerated gestures characteristic of a gay man, and Jennifer also let out a small smile.
“So? How was it?”
“How was what?”
“You took him nachos and beer, didn’t you? Did he fall for you?”
“Fall for me? Nothing fell.”
“For our prissy Miss Jennifer to treat someone to nachos and beer—doesn’t that mean you’re interested?”
“It’s not like that. It was an apology.”
“Really? Was it really a hundred percent an apology? You ran over there with your heels all scraped up.”
“Lawrence, stop it. Not funny.”
“Show me a picture. One look at the picture and I’ll know the answer right away.”
“What answer?”
“If he’s cute, you had ulterior motives. If not, our Miss Jennifer is simply excessively polite. Come on, give me a picture.”
While the three were laughing and chatting like that, Colin Hart, a second-year student taking the same course, approached them.
To be precise, he had come to speak to Jennifer.
“Jennifer Lin?”
“Yep.”
“I’m Colin.”
“Hi, Colin.”
“I read the legal brief you wrote through Kyle. It was pretty good.”
“Yeah?”
“Ah, sorry. To be honest, it wasn’t just pretty good—it was so good I couldn’t believe a student who just entered law school wrote it.”
“Thanks.”
“So, I was wondering—would you like to compete with us in the Immigration Law Moot Court Competition being hosted by NYU this time?”
Instead of answering, Jennifer smiled.
It meant she would.
That was precisely why she had submitted the legal brief in the first place.
---*---
On Monday, after Lawyering class, we headed to a nearby coffee shop to talk about participating in the Immigration Law Moot Court Competition.
“It seems like more people are participating this time than I thought.”
The Immigration Law Moot Court Competition, started in 2006, was an event hosted by NYU where students enrolled in law schools registered with the American Bar Association could participate.
Applications were accepted in September, preliminaries were held, and the final round took place on the NYU campus in February.
“How do you know that?”
“I casually asked around. It seems like there are easily twenty or thirty people interested.”
Later, this competition became so popular that individual teams could no longer be formed, and one had to be selected for the school representative team through the Moot Court Board.
In 2012, when this story took place, that was not yet the case.
“Seriously, more people are participating than I thought.”
At the information Michael had gathered, Sein and Donguk-hyung seemed slightly bothered, but I already knew.
That the scholarship amount awarded to winners had increased starting this year, so many more people were participating.
“Second- and third-years will probably participate too. The competition will be fierce. Will we be okay?”
“No. The upperclassmen won’t participate that much because they’ll be busy preparing for the Marden Competition.”
The Marden Competition was another moot court competition at NYU that was older than the Immigration Law Competition and was incomparably greater in terms of prize money and prestige.
First-years could not participate, and one had to be selected for the representative team organized by the NYU Moot Court Board to compete.
“True. That one’s more famous. The fields are more diverse too.”
That was why I thought the Immigration Law moot court competition was an opportunity.
Since it had only been held six times and allowed more free participation than the other competitions, I had the thought that with Donguk-hyung’s practical experience and my second-time-around knowledge, we might be able to aim for the win, you might say.
“Okay! We already decided to do it, so let’s stop worrying and give it a shot. Anyway, the first round of judging is based on the legal brief, right?”
That said, it was by no means an easy challenge.
Especially this year, the competition had grown fiercer. Since they couldn’t send everyone who applied, the school intended to select representative teams through screening.
And that screening criterion was precisely the legal brief.
“Yes.”
A legal brief was an opinion document containing arguments regarding a legal issue, similar to a written submission filed with a court in the Korean legal system.
In other words, it was a piece of writing that logically explained why the client’s claim we were advocating was valid, in order to persuade the judges.
Most moot court competitions were structured that way.
First, the submitted legal briefs were evaluated, and only a few teams with outstanding arguments were selected to advance to the oral argument round.
Therefore, if there were many applicants, the school would first screen the teams that would represent the school through legal brief evaluation.
“Yes.”
“When did they say we have to submit by?”
“The third Friday of September.”
“The third Friday? That’s way too tight.”
“Yeah, will we be able to do it by then? We only have two weeks left. We have to do research, and honestly, I’m not even used to IRAC yet······.”
It was possible. I had written it by rummaging through my memories from ten years ago.
“Actually, I have a draft written. Would you mind taking a look?”
“What? You already have one written?!”
At the mention of a prepared legal brief, Donguk-hyung and the kids’ eyes went wide.
Bulletproof Brief (1)
The next day, at lunch,
we gathered again to discuss the draft legal brief I had given them yesterday.
“How is it?”
At my cautious question,
“It was written so well!”
“Really! When did you even look up those cases?”
“Honestly, it’s at a level where I can’t even evaluate it······. But you spent your weekend writing that instead of having fun? Ooh—sheesh.”
Everyone responded favorably.
“Honestly, a legal brief here is similar yet different from the written submissions filed in Korean courts, so it’s hard for me to judge precisely, but in terms of logic, it was practically perfect. And I’m a lawyer, yet no matter how much I looked at it to add something, there was nothing left to touch.”
“Is it okay?”
“It’s way more than okay. Hey, Heon, just become a lawyer already.”
“Come on—why would you say that, hyung.”
“I was totally shocked reading it too. And I looked up the cases you cited, and the citations were all correct. Did you find all those cases in that short time?”
In truth, it was almost identical to the legal memo I had submitted as a final assignment in Lawyering class ten years ago.
“A brief is a document written to persuade the court or the opposing party, whereas a legal memo is a more objectively written opinion document, mainly prepared for clients or fellow attorneys.”
One of the selected issues for this Immigration Law moot court happened, by a lucky coincidence, to be the same topic as that legal memo.
At first, I had wondered whether I would really remember it, but perhaps because it had been an assignment I’d worked on so diligently, once I focused and started writing, the words flowed without pause.
“It relates to a paper Professor Madison is currently writing, so I looked into it while working on that.”
“That’s ridiculous. How is that possible? Hey, Jaeheon, tell me the truth. Did you go to law school somewhere before? Oppa, does this even make sense?”
Had I spoken too nonchalantly? Sein shook her head, unable to believe it.
“Okay, then you two seem fine with it. Michael, no comment?”
“I told you. It’s not at a level I can judge.”
Michael’s indifferent answer.
I didn’t mind, but Sein did.
“Hey, did you even read it?”
“I read it.”
“Really? I thought you went to the pub with Clemens last night.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Then when did you have time to read it?”
“Ha—Oh, Sein, do you like me?”
“What?”
“I mean, isn’t it a bit much that you’re so interested in who I go to the pub with? You’re confusing me.”
“Funny. Hey! I’m just worried you plan to coast along. If that’s what you’re going to do, don’t bother. Like I’d like you······.”
The two had grown much closer since the housewarming party.
Sein hadn’t meant anything bad by it.
Michael had a somewhat lackadaisical image, and she, being sharp and decisive, had simply pointed it out.
It was the sort of thing that happened in a relationship where people were just getting to know each other, and fortunately, Michael was also aware he had that side to him, so he didn’t take it too badly.
He was the type to take the easy way if there was one, but he was by no means a kid who slacked off on something he had taken on. If he were, he wouldn’t have gotten into NYU Law in the first place.
And later, when he grew up (?), he became a highly skilled divorce attorney.
“I read it. Honestly, I think Heon wrote it really well too. But this competition isn’t just for first-years, you know. It’s a competition with second- and third-years who have internship or court practical experience. Wouldn’t we need a more objective evaluation?”
“An objective evaluation?”
“Yeah. For example, an evaluation by someone like my hyung—an arrogant lawyer who thinks he’s the best in the world.”
Michael wore his most serious expression since the semester began.
Sein seemed to pick up on something and didn’t say anything more.
“Would a guy like your hyung really read a brief written by a first-year law student?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“I know that guy’s psychology well. If you’re okay with it, how about getting an evaluation from my hyung?”
It would be an honor if he did.
“Good.”
“Okay, then I’ll ask him.”