Everything I Need to Know I Learned from John Grisham

Hold the phones. I'm sitting in Media Law and the ditzy, hapless victim of the professor's Socratic questioning cited as a basis of her reasoning John Grisham's A Time to Kill. Except she didn't even really know the name of the book; she just referred to it as "some John Grisham book" (and I only figured out which book it was because of her brief and oblique description of the plot).

Let me repeat this so you can fully absorb it: A law student just cited John Grisham to establish a legal principle.

Perhaps she is the same person who referenced the television show "ER" in Health Care Law a few weeks ago as the basis for her beliefs about how hospital emergency rooms operate.

What world am I living in? Someone help me out here. Maybe if I write "Because 'Law & Order' told me so," on the bar exam, they'll accept the answer and I'll pass. Or perhaps if I start throwing out legal non sequiturs in everyday conversation, people will think I'm smart and important.

Good grief.