Suppose you are about to go on vacation and you ask you neighbor to gather your mail for you while you are away. What legal responsibility does your neighbor have with regard to the letters, bills and L.L. Bean Catalog that land in your mailbox? Suppose when you return home you loan the neighbor your lawn mower, so that she can cut the grass while her mower is in the shop. How careful must she be with your Lawn-Boy?
Between now and August this blog will be about the law, which addresses such questions directly. More specifically, I’ll be writing about my study for the New York State bar examination, which is slated to take place over two days starting July 29.
I last sat for a bar exam 26 years ago, in Pennsylvania, the summer after I graduated from law school. Since then my career, like the careers of many lawyers, has shifted course several times. I’ve become a journalist and reported the news at both a top trade publication and at one of New York City’s leading daily newspapers. I served as a lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission and lived in Africa.
Thus my studying for the bar exam is a homecoming of sorts, and an opportunity to reunite with the world of black-letter law. That includes the guts of such things as estates in land, the elements of crimes and the essentials of an enforceable contract. It also includes the Miranda Rule, defamation, the Constitution and much, much more.
The endeavor appeals to the journalist in me who loves learning and thrills at the prospect of finding stories. It also appeals to my love of the law, and, I hope, will allow me to tap a part of my training that I think will make me a both better journalist and a better lawyer. I plan to use this space to share some of what I learn along the way.
As for the mower, the neighbor has a responsibility to take the utmost care of it. She’ll be responsible for even slight damage because the loan was solely for her benefit. Then again, her holding your mail was for your benefit. Thus, she has less responsibility, legally, to take good care of that.
Of course, here’s to you and your neighbor never having to sue each other…