Law School Insider: The Comprehensive 21st Century Guide to Success in Admissions, Classes, Law Review, Bar Exams and Job Searches, for Prospective Students and Their Loved Ones

Now that I've completed my first year, I think that there are three books that every law student should read before (and maybe during) attending law school. The first two are Law School Insider and Getting to Maybe. Getting to Maybe is a good book on exams, and Law School Insider is the best book about the experience and how to prepare.

A little about law school: law school is a challenging LEARNING experience. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school to learn how to think, how to read, and how to manage your time. It is not just about getting good grades, it is about picking an area of personal specialization and actually learning. Only Law School Insider speaks to both the importance of grades and truly learning a specialty.

Besides the fact that Law School Insider is much more thorough, it is also a mature person's look at law school. Law School Confidential is peppered with exclamation marks (to make it seem more exciting!), formulas, way too many cocky, overconfident male perspectives, and handfuls of comments from all-white "mentors." I recognized these as gimmicks when I saw them but only realized how wrong and useless they were for me when I tried some of them.

By comparison, Law School Insider is a balanced book that actually speaks to the lifestyles and choices of different readers, including people who are married and worried about starting a life after law school, and tells people from diverse backgrounds how to maximize their chances of success. It has the most useful information, with none of Confidential's attitude. You can see that same attitude in the few absurdly negative reviews of Insider, but ignore it, it's just more Confidential hype without any substance.

On the subject of attitude, there is not a trace of arrogance or artificial stress anywhere in Insider. This contrasts sharply with Confidential, which suggests among other things that you should skip applying to law schools unless you're going to go someplace Robert Miller and his friends consider prestigious, and that law school is going to be like a war. Miller and I were both educated in Pennsylvania, but I know this stuff isn't even true at most of the schools in my state, let alone elsewhere in the country.

So what is the third book I would recommend if not Confidential? One-L. Confidential's perspective on law school is old and outdated too, but One-L is much more entertaining if you're buying a book about law School to be entertained. If you're looking to learn about law school life, you owe it to yourself to buy Law School Insider instead.

Also, this book does a really good job of explaining how law students really handle relationships and family pressures, a topic that was really important to me, and also talks about sensitive issues such as race and gender in law school, job interviewing, and the job market. It is also very good to know how the economy will affect my chances of getting a job, and what people need to do in law school to land the right job in bad times.

Overall HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and a book I will let my family read when I am done going through it again.

Throughout the book, Jeremy offers a lot of valuable details about his personal experience as a law student in Cornell Law School. For example, he writes that his "...own first day of classes was only modestly intimidating. The readings had taken a long time, but were short enough that I though that I generally understood where they were going. Most of my professors initially came across as nice enough people, and the first class discussions about the readings were relatively gentle..." I found this to be similar to my own law school classes. In other chapters, he describes his experience of hunting for a job and compares different areas of practice and cities. No doubt, such details are extremely important. A few persons who posted their negative reviews about this book should have known that God is in details.

It is no secret that, due to the economic and other related factors, admission to any law school in the country (not to mention top law schools) has become extremely competitive during the recent years. LSAC offers the following nationwide statistics:

Law School Applications (Entering Class of Fall 2002)
89,000 applicants submitted over 440,000 applications. Average of approximately 5.3 applications per person; 17.4% increase in applications.

LSAT Test Takers (Entering class for Fall 2003)
June 2002 LSAT: Largest June exam in history. 27,808 prospective applicants took the exam; 16.3% increase from June 2001 exam.
October 2002: 52,604 persons took this exam; 12.5% increase over October 2001.

The bad news is, of course, that the competition to get into the law school of your choice is going to get even much tougher. But the good news is that after reading Law School Insider your chances of admission to your dream school will increase significantly. I strongly believe that this book is a must for any prospective law student. It is worth every penny, and I highly recommend it to anyone considering going to law school. Also, the Internet website created by Jeremy Horwitz, www.lawschoolinsider.com, is an excellent source for obtaining additional information about the complicated law school admission process, as well as for finding answers to your questions.

A short note about myself: I hold my first law degree from one of the best law schools in Europe, and an advanced Master of Laws degree from American law school (I wish I had read this book before I was applying to the LL.M. program!)

Law School Insider takes a lot of the mystery out of the process. It discusses DOs and DON'Ts in frank, understandable terms. It gives you helpful tools for making plans.

Some of the things I read in this book I would normally expect to learn in school. Law School Insider reviews the various ways you can specialize as a lawyer--Tax, Civil, etc.

But this book also goes into how to structure your life to succeed while you are in school. This is helpful stuff. I cannot believe anybody is so fundamentally well organized that they will not benefit from the suggestions contained in this book. And this is not just about organizing your studies, it's about keeping your private life working, too.

This is not just a book for people who are heading to law school. If you are considering law school, read this book and see how you will be spending the next three years of your life. You will walk away encouraged or realizing that maybe law school is not the answer. Eithter way, you will be glad that you read Law School Insider.

I especially appreciated the tone of the book; for those of us that are realistic about our law school choices and options, Harvard and Yale anecdotes quickly get old. The majority of law students are not going to get Harvard degrees or the Harvard employment options after graduation. (I immediately felt kinship with the author when he mentioned that during an evening event during his Cornell Law orientation, not everyone had been in a yacht club before.) I have no idea what kind of lawyer I am going to be, or all of the opportunities that will be available with the degree I will earn at my second-tier school. However, it made me feel better knowing that bright, driven individuals can make sense of the whole situation regardless of background. And some of them write books to help out those of us about the enter the law school jungle. I recommend this book for those interested in a thoughtful Law School guidebook.