What to Read Before Law School? (Part 1)

I know where you are inside. I've been there. You know what law school's not: you know it's not like undergrad; you know it's not easy; you know it's not for the timid. Maybe you watched The Paper Chase. Maybe you know someone who went to law school. Maybe you don't have any idea what you're getting into except what you read on blawgs and blogs.
If you are like I was, you are looking for something to ground you in that sea of uncertainty.
I read a number of books before I started. Some were recommended by others. Some I picked off of Amazon. Some I stumbled onto. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on books I read before law school and how they were or were not useful to me.
A main thread throughout all of these, however, is pick and choose the advice. No one text has all of the answers. In every book I could glean some ideas on what worked, and what would not work. I had to read each text with a discriminating eye, though. I was choosy about the advice—even as I disregarded some advice, I saw how it might be useful to other people. So don’t take any of these as some kind of binding gospel in the plan for how to do well. Reading several books was useful to me in that I obtained a better gestalt by reading the whole rather than relying on any single source.
    
Slaying the Law School Dragon (ISBN 0471542989) George Roth; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
I got this short text as a gift from a school. It’s a short read. The perspective is from someone who went to law school some time ago.
This is a short text. It gives you a sense of what to expect and has some genuinely useful advice going forward. The professors at QU are not like this fellow’s professors, however, and the legal employment scene today isn’t much like his experience. A number of his recommendations are dated given the fact that we have electronic resources for research now. However, some of his study advice is particularly noteworthy, even if not how I have chosen to prepare (like memorizing the table of contents of each text—not a bad idea frankly, but not what I have chosen to do). Take the advice with adequate salt, but his perspective is at least a decent survey if you don’t want to spend a lot of time in these kinds of books.

Law School Confidential (ISBN 0-312-31881-2) Robert H. Miller; St. Martin’s Press
This book is one of the more popular reads out there. It has some genuinely useful strategies on class preparation, and I use variations of these strategies extensively. It offers a decent sensibility on atmosphere—not quite accurate for QU Law, but much closer than Turow’s book, for example. This book is more comprehensive and modern than the Roth text, but it is written explicitly for a target audience of people going to schools in the T10. Much of the advice is useful, but needs to be taken with prodigious salt. The author intermingles various perspectives of law students—some of which are more useful than others. Don’t read this book cover to cover—read the parts that interest you or apply to you. I should say, though, it is a text I return to occasionally, even now.

Law School Insider (ISBN 0-9723766-0-7)   Jeremy Horowitz; Lion Group
The best thing about this text is how it is a close examination of social issues that can arise in law school. The worst thing about this text is that it closely examines social issues that can arise at law school in an environment most law students will not experience. It’s a very subjective text—the author goes to Cornell law. Having lived in Ithaca for a long time—and having adored that town—the author rubs my rhubarb a bit wrong when he comes down on my beloved town… he and I are clearly different types of people. I also found the magic romance that pops up in his text a bit contrived and annoying.
Yet some of his advice is really good. This is especially true about social interaction at law school—how to avoid being “that guy.” As always, take his advice with a grain of salt, of course, but this is the most useful text with regards to social expectations.

Stay tuned for more book reviews in What to Read Before Law School (Part 2)
 
Mario Cerame 1L