waive reading of the rights and charges

Well, the intensity of boot camp in addition to classes has increased significantly, providing an explanation for my lack of blogging the past few days. But a quick update, in bullet form, before sleep.

First: a happy note:
- Having access to the Criminal Law Clinic office is very nice - kind of a safe space to study and bounce around ideas.

Then, a comedy of errors:
- Today was a simulated interview and arraignment. I got the file yesterday afternoon, spent hours trying to make heads or tails of it (a 100+ document titled "how to read a rap sheet" was helpful, but not exactly light reading.) When you're a n00b, even the simple things take forever... so I spent 20 minutes trying to track down a statute based on an unfamiliar acronym (TAR).
- In the mock interview today (recorded on dvd), I caught myself saying "gotcha" to the client several times. Must stop.
- During the arraignment, I made quite the stupid mistake in that I didn't agree to waive the reading of the rights and charges. For whatever reason, I had confused the instruction and stories we had been told about how that's always done and somehow swapped it with having heard ADAs describe, to some extent, the circumstances of the crimes at arraignment. Not the same thing at all. And now, through the power of public humiliation (due completely to my own ignorance), I will never forget to waive the reading of the rights and charges.

But it's always good to get your really stupid mistakes out of the way early. First semester of law school - on the very first day of class in Torts - I spoke up and was completely dead wrong in my reading of a case. Professor Levine corrected me and said something like, "Today is the day to say stuff like that. Go ahead out on that limb - we will bring you back!" I was really embarrassed at the time - but in the end, I pulled a good grade and ended up TA'ing for Prof. Levine.... which I think was due in part to my continuing vigilance to avoid sounding as dumb as I did on the first day.

Finally, some theoretical-perspective observations:
- During the interview, the acting was so good that I actually believed that the client was really lying/trying to manipulate me. My (fake) client was accused of swiping people through the turnstiles of the subway with a forged/bent metrocard. His story was iffy - and at one point he "slipped" and said, "I was standing there waiting for my minutes to expire" - and I almost leapt into cross examination mode: wait? what minutes? did you swipe somebody? did you transfer? And then he got quiet. It's going to be a balancing act that I'm going to have to learn to handle - building the trust with the client so they know I'm on their side, but not seeming like a dupe in the process. At one point he said, "you seem sharp" - and I wondered about the motivation.
I've been told and don't doubt that it's true that our clients, in REAL world situations, are going to have little reason to trust me and strong motives to lie. It's going to be interesting.