Welcome to My Cocktail Napkins Blog!

Huh? Cocktail napkins? What are you talking about, LB? Well, here I plan to scribble notes about the various subjects I'm studying each day as I prepare for the Maine and Mass Bar Exams. It won't be full outlines because I see no point in writing down the basics that I already know. It will be about nuances and tricky points and figuring out ways that I want to sort them out in my own head. So what does that have to do with cocktail napkins? Not that much really, but it's the metaphor that I came up with last night when I conceived of posting my bar study notes on Blogger. You see, I was studying contracts yesterday, and there are a couple of early cases that we studied in which contracts are formed (or not) on the back of cocktail napkins. Also, because I plan to have the notes be a little random and incomplete, I thought the scribblings on the back of cocktail napkins was a good metaphor. Plus, silly, you get cocktail napkins where? At the bar, of course!

Why post the notes on-line? I don't know exactly. It just seems like it might be helpful to feel like I have some sort of audience, even if no one's really reading this thing! I learn best by explaining things to other people (I used to be a high school teacher and will always remain one at heart, I suppose). I thought about doing an audio or video podcast so that I could "teach" my way through the material, but that seemed like way too much production work and not nearly enough studying. This is the next best thing.

To remain efficient, this blog will have no pictures and won't be cleverly edited. The posts will be longer than is generally acceptable for blog posts.

A disclaimer: I do not hold anything here to be a correct statement of law or a good way of looking at any particular subject matter. My understandings may be irretrievably flawed. If you are reading this blog, you rely on my explanations at your peril. However, I invite you to point out my errors any time you see them in the comments.