Starting my second (& last) term for #pgdl I'm not much closer to deciding between barrister and solicitor, or narrowing down a specialist area.

Imagine my disappointment in learning that the "something likely to do mischief" in Rylands and Fletcher was just water...😐 I had cursed objects, imps, or at least a flock of malevolent swans on mind.

Reasonable reasonable reasonable reasonable reason able reasonable not reasonable reason able reasonable reasonable #learning #legalanguage

I used to be a Gothicist (or I still am? Does one cease to be anything?) & one of my most brilliant mentors was a former lawyer-turned-academic who wrote on Gothic and the Law. At every turn now, I can see why...

I don't think I knew what "grey" was until I started studying law. I used to blithely say there was no right answer in my former life, but I don't know now if that was ever really true. Or it was just a measure of my security and comfort that I could exist with uncertainties of a knowable kind.

In good company for a morning of revision in the basement of the library.

Spending a week reading about partial defences to murder is not what I thought I'd enjoy doing. I do, however, appreciate the capacity to surprise myself. (Though unsurprised I am hooked by the different philosophies of provocation!)

Part payment *plus* a 'horse, a hawk, or a robe' makes perfect sense to me. It's the details that make the law memorable. Thanks Pinnel's Case.

I was 99% joking in thinking my PhD on 18thC British property law and literature would be helpful in this life-change - and it's generally not. But every so often, an authority on a point of law will open a little window to that century and I get to be in that world for a little bit again. 📖♥️

Snagged every time by the points where the law uses history as a defence and vice versa.

Sluggish day slogging a bit through tort law. Briefly sparkly coming across the phrase 'legal fiction', which was an important part of my previous life in 18thC literature. 📖🤓

Answering SBAQs correctly is my new caffeine jolt. As well as actual caffeine ofc.

Ooh I like contract law. So many little unfolding boxes. It's like a legal Fibonacci sequence.

Interesting: tort law defined assault before there were statutes for these. Also 'tortfeasor', malfeasance, nonfeasance. The language of law continues to give.

In spite of an energetic 4 1/2 minute presentation, my initial response to Tort Law remains...meh. 😕 Though as ever, I was briefly engaged by the *history* of Tort.

Blackstone watch: vol 3 on hunting. Tho he did apparently include foxes as "ravenous beasts of prey" which is OTT, imho. Emotional stuff.

I know it's early in this journey but I kind of love reading legal cases. Today's terms were ratio decidendi and obiter dictum.

Statutory interpretation has won my critical-reading, language-loving heart. Noscitur a sociis! Eiudem Generis! The Mischief Rule! Presumptions!

Feoffment, amercement, allodial title. The lexical results of a morning coffee + casual reading on the history of land law. Also the following dates: 1267, 1677, 1925.

PGdL course starts next week; I'm half-anxious, half-excited, deep into prep-reading and already have a million article ideas - which is my process after 15 years as an academic...

In January 2024, I decided to leave academia; in October, I decided to start again in law - conversion course starts almost one year to the day of my decision. New year; really new year.