Reviewing the case to determine whether the evidence was legally sufficient under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), the court considered the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court first noted that evidence of intoxication near the time of driving was probative evidence that the defendant had been intoxicated at the time of driving. The defendant admitted that he arrived home about thirty minutes before the officers arrived, and the officers testified the defendant was intoxicated when they found him there Furthermore, the court found there was circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s intoxication at the time of the collision, specifically his involvement in a single-car collision, the lack of skid marks prior to impact, and the defendant’s flight from the scene while driving nearly seven miles on a tire rim with a shredded tire.

As to the defendant’s claim that he became intoxicated after arriving at his home, the court found the jury, as the sole arbiter of credibility, was free to consider or disregard the defendant’s testimony that his consumption of three glasses of wine after arriving at his home was the cause of his intoxication. The court concluded that while each circumstance alone might not support a finding of legal sufficiency, “the cumulative force of the incriminating circumstances” was sufficient to support the conviction.

Here’s an excerpt:

How competitive is it to get a job with the Justice Department?

Highly competitive. Highly, highly competitive. You may send a resume to any USAO and it will be placed in an applicant file. Hopefully, your resume will have that something-special, i.e., bi-lingual, information technology expertise, outstanding trial work-qualifications that will put you high on the list. Openings now are generated primarily by attrition. When a “slot” opens, the U.S. Attorney has the applicant files pulled for review by several staff AUSAs, who begin the resume weeding-out process. Some offices may have 200 applications for one slot, others may have close to 1,000. Whether they winnow it to 10 or 25, several prospects are called in for intensive interviews, usually by several members of senior management. That interview may be the most important “jury trial” of your career. Here’s a caveat: if you don’t have an ego, don’t even try.

Then, perhaps, to three, then one. Every office has a procedure, not necessarily the one I described, but something similar. But this is where personality, prosecutorial experience, and high-level recommendations become the deal-maker or deal breaker.

For the complete article, visit the Art of Manliness.

1. Be sure to select someone knows you well and is familiar with your work.
2. Ask the potential recommender if they are willing, and have time, to complete a letter of recommendation for you. Understand that your potential recommender is busy, so be sure to approach the potential recommender as early as possible.
3. Follow up with the initial conversation to provide the recommender with specific information about the requested letter, including who the letter should be addressed to, when the letter is due, and what qualities the selection committee or recipient is looking for.
4. Provide the recommender with a copy of your resume.
5. Let the recommender know, in a couple of sentences, why you are an ideal candidate for the position or award you are applying for. You need to be able to articulate this before you expect your recommender to.
6. Include a list of items that you have worked on that the recommender has reviewed so the recommender can comment on specific tasks that you have completed.
7. Consider providing the recommender a copy of your transcript, especially if the recommender is a professor or will be addressing your potential for academic success.
8. If the letter needs to be mailed, provide the recommender with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. This ensures the letter will be mailed without delay. If the letter needs to be uploaded, faxed, or sent electronically, provide clear instructions to do so.
9. If the letter is not made out to a specific individual or group, consider asking for more than one undated, original copy of the letter. This allows you to have an original letter of recommendation on file that you can use at a future date. Be sure to get the recommender’s permission before you use any additional copies of the letter.
10. Finally, send a letter thanking your recommender for taking the time to write you the letter of recommendation. Let the recommender know if your application was successful so that they know their letter was beneficial to you.

2. Switch between text case: Highlight a portion of text and use the Shift+F3 combination to switch between text case. Word will toggle through sentence case, upper case, and lower case.

3. Switch to small caps: Use Control+Shift+K to switch highlighted text to small caps. This is especially useful for citations on law journals.

4. Delete entire words: The Ctrl+Delete combination will delete entire words, which will save you some time when you are making substantial changes to documents.

5. Quickly add annotations (also called “comments”): This shortcut works even if you don’t already have the Microsoft Word reviewing Pane open: hit Ctrl+Alt+M to insert an annotation (comment) into a document.

6. Switch between open Word documents on a Mac: If you are using Microsoft Word on an Mac, you may have noticed that the standard key combination to switch between open windows, Command-Tab, does not switch between open Word documents, but instead switches to the next open application. There is a shortcut to switch between open Word documents on a Mac:  Command +`. The ` button is the same as the tilda (~) button on the keyboard. It is usually right above the tab key, to the left of the 1 key.

7. Add a footnote in Word documents: If you are using Word on a Windows PC, the Alt+Ctrl+F combination will insert a footnote for you with out having to go through the insert-menu at the top of the page. If you are using Microsoft Word on a Mac, the combination is Option+Command+F.

8. Use the built-in thesaurus: The Shift+F7 combination will look up a highlighted word in the thesaurus sidebar in Microsoft Word.

9. Insert the date: The Alt+Shift+D combination will enter date quickly into a document.

10. Move entire paragraphs: The Shift+Alt+Up or Down Arrow combination allows you to move entire paragraphs up or down in a document.

Bonus Tip: Set your auto-recover to one minute: By default, Microsoft Word automatically saves documents every ten minutes. Since recreating ten minutes worth of work often takes more than ten more minutes, play it safe and change the auto-recover time to one minute. That way, if Word does crash, most of your work is easily recoverable. Here is how to change your auto-recovery time in Word 2007:

1. Click on the Office Button (the Office icon in the circle on the top-left of the window
2. Click on Word Options (it is on the bottom border of the menu).
3. Click on the Save tab.
4. Make sure the AutoRecover box is checked and change the interval to one minute

This is also a good time to change the AutoRecover location to something you can easily locate if you ever need to. I have my location set to a folder within the Documents folder on my computer.

If you are on a Mac, the steps to change the AutoRecover save interval are as follows:

1. Go to the Word Menu
2. Select Preferences
3. Click on the Save icon
4. Set the “Save AutoRecover interval to one minute.

The Paper Chase

Professor Kingsfield was right; law school changes the way you read, the way you think, and the way you analyze. Not unlike boot camp, this three-year odyssey is meant to break you and then remake you into something better than you were before. There are a number of things that you can do to ensure you come out on top when all the making and breaking is done:

1. Get advice from 2Ls and 3Ls who are successful in the areas you want to be successful in. There are a number of ways to be successful in law school. You can make the highest grades, become an acclaimed advocate, or become an editor for a law review or law journal. An important key to being successful in law school is getting advice from students who are already successful in the areas you want to be successful in. Every law student wants to make good grades, and high grades, more than anything else, are rewarded upon graduation. Find students who are at the top of their class and find what worked for them, how they managed their time, and how they prepared for their finals. Find students who have had the professors you are taking to get an idea of what to expect and what the professor expects of you. If you want to focus on honing your litigation skills, seek out a mentor who has been on a national mock trial or moot court team. If you want to become an editor on law review or a law journal, focus on improving your writing skills, pay attention to detail, and find someone who already is on a journal to learn about what it is like being on a journal and tips on effectively managing your time.

2. How you do on the final is much more important than how you answer a question in class.
The Socratic Method strikes fear in the hearts of 1Ls across the nation every year, and it is easy to be caught up in just reading for class to make sure you can answer the question when the professor calls on you. However, knowing the minutiae of every case is not what is going to get you the best grades, you need to be able to step back and see the big picture, so don’t sweat it if you get an answer wrong in class, but make sure you understand why you missed it, and focus on preparing for the final.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Every year brave young law students start their outlines from scratch. While there is utility in analyzing cases and creating your own outlines, especially when you first start studying the law, the time you have available to you in law school is limited. Make the best use of your time by using existing outlines as a starting point, which you can then tweak and make your own. Conversely, you will never want to rely solely on someone else’s outline. Make sure you agree with their conclusions and summary of the law. When in doubt, consult with your professor.

4. Get to know your professors.
Law schools pride themselves on low student to professor ratios and as a result most law school professors have the opportunity to get to know their students. However, it is up to the students to take advantage of this opportunity. Take the time to meet with professors when questions in during the semester, rather than waiting till the end of the semester to approach them. There are students who never set foot in a professor’s office do very well on their exams. Just because they haven’t been in the professor’s office doesn’t mean they haven’t spent the semester getting to know the professor. Successful students seek out prior exams or model exams that the professor has made available, and contemplates questions that could arise while they study, so that they know what to expect on test day.

5. Get to know your law librarians.
Law librarians are a great resource. They know how to use online resources like Westlaw and Lexis, as well as print resources better than probably anyone else in the law school. They are also there to help you find what you are looking for. There are numerous databases and resources that are often overlooked by even experienced researchers or lawyers that law librarians are familiar with. They can also assist you in forming good Boolean searches, give you search tips, and point you to the best starting point for your topic.

6. Find time for yourself.
Law school will likely be the most challenging endeavor you will have undertaken at this point in your life. It is important, now more than ever, to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Regular sleep patterns and exercise may seem hard to fit into your schedule, but are even more important now that it seems like you don’t have time for either.

7. Use technology wisely.
The smaller the laptop, the better. You law school books are going to take up a lot of space and the last thing you need is a 17 inch laptop to lug around every day. Back up your work religiously. Email yourself documents that you are working on at the end of each day. On the weekends, back your laptop up to external drives or at the very least to a thumb drive. Finally, use a free service like Mozy to back up your documents on a regular basis.

8. Master the law school exam.
Your entire grade for a law school class is often based on a single final exam. Master the law school exam process: http://www.leews.com/ and Getting To Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams.
At the very least, pick up old exams and do practice questions under timed conditions. Also, be aware that very often commercial outlines go into areas of law not covered by your professor, so to maximize your study time, seek out old exams or practice questions from the professor, the law school library, or other students. Law school exams usually consist of a long fact pattern followed by a series of questions. There are often no right or wrong answers. You are getting graded on spotting issues and them analyzing the potential outcomes. The facts usually come down somewhere in between two or more cases you looked at in your reading so you will have to compare the facts presented with fact patterns you came across in your reading and then predict how the court will come out. The prediction isn’t what you are graded on; it is the analysis of the facts and law that leads to your prediction that is graded. If you don’t correctly spot the issue, you lose the opportunity to get points for either the analysis. A very simple way to think of a law school answer is set forth by the IRAC Method: Issue, Rule of Law, Analysis, and Conclusion.

9. Consider joining a study group.
Going over the material with another person or a small group of people will help you hash out concepts, and ensure a thorough overview of the subject. Study groups sessions should be secondary to extensive individual study, so as a group you can focus on practice questions, clarifying issues, and making sure you have hit all the main concepts.

10. Don’t underestimate the value of after-class review or overestimate the value of reading for class.
After-class review is as important, if not more important than reading for class. Reviewing after class ensures that you completely understand the material. It should be the third time you are covering the material, the first being when you read before class, and the second being when you went over it in class. After-class review also allows you the opportunity to take any questions you still have on a topic to your professor for clarification. After class review sessions are also the perfect time to review and make notes to your outline.

Good luck to all of you starting class here in the next few weeks. I wish you all the best, and look forward  to seeing additional tips posted in the comments.