Hung on her bedroom door
A law student at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has penned an amusing legal notice as classes move online amid the coronavirus disruption.
‘Zoom Class Act 2020’ was drafted by Mythili Mishra, a second year law student at the London university.
The ‘Act’ (below) features three clauses that she sellotaped to her bedroom door to prevent her parents, who she says “don’t understand the concept of knocking but … do understand statutory interpretation” from entering while she’s “in class”. This applies in all situations, except genuine emergencies, the aspiring lawyer writes, and qualifies this by stating “showing me a funny video is NOT a genuine emergency”.
Mishra later updated the post, which has received over 1,000 reactions, including just under 500 likes, to say it was taken down “for being ultra vires”, a quip suggesting she had hung the notice without authority.
It prompted one US student to share her “do NOT disturb during bar study” notice while prepping for an exam. It didn’t work though, as the “over-stressed and under-prepared” bar rookie wrote “barging in” from her family, presumably, was “a constant problem”.
Video conferencing and online meeting platform Zoom has risen to prominence in recent weeks, as law schools move lectures online amid the current COVID-19 crisis. Mishra told Legal Cheek how she’s coping with the change.
“I usually did my readings at home anyway, so the change isn’t drastic for me. But my family isn’t used to the idea of online classes (no one is) so my classmates have seen them in the background of my video quite a few times!”
This follows Friday’s story featuring Serjeants’ Inn Chambers’ Bridget Dolan QC. The “stressed out” med neg silk and mother drafted a tongue-in-cheek “legal notice” and hung it on her door.
“The thing you think you can see inside this room is not your mother,” the note says. “It is a barrister being stressed out by having to conduct conferences with solicitors and telephone hearings with judges from home whilst also juggling paperwork and responding to a tsunami of emails.”