The legend of the cane...

The University of Wisconsin Law School has a tradition where the third year class gets to saunter across the football field before the Homecoming game wearing silly bowler hats and carrying canes. We then got to toss our cane over the goalpost and if we caught it the legend has it that you are supposed to win your first case. Well I caught my cane but the winning part ... not so much in my case. But, to be honest I am not very heartborken. I was assigned a case in which a prisoner had has petition to change his name granted. The DOC found out about it when they got the judge's order telling them to change all of their records, and surprise surprise they then decided that they didn't want this guy to change his name after all. So I had the task of attempting to argue to the judge why the DOC should now be able to intervene after he had already granted the name-change petition and then reverse his decision. I gave it a go - but I was not too surprised nor upset when he basically said you snooze, you lose. The prisoner followed the rules by publishing his request for three straight weeks and the DOC had the opportunity to intervene at that point and did not. Oh well, at least I got to get out of the office for basically the whole day and it was a beautiful day for a drive.