-Black's Law Dictionary
I’ve been planning this
update about these books for a while, and ironically, my law school assigned
readings from these books for the 1Ls. If
you’ve been with my blog since the beginning or have read all of my posts,
you’ve probably read my post on What I’m Reading to Prep for Law School. Now that I’m going into my 3L year, I felt
that it was a good time to look back on these “law school prep books” and see
if they were worth buying and reading. So,
if you are starting law school soon (maybe in the next few weeks!) and just
want to feel a little more comfortable with the journey, check out one of these
books to see what they have to say about law school!
Reading Like a Lawyer-Ruth Ann McKinney
When I wrote my initial post
on law school prep books, I hadn’t read this book yet, but I ended up reading
it this summer and am kinda regretting not reading it earlier. As dumb as this sounds, it truly helps you to
read like a lawyer. Law school reading
is a different beast than “fun” reading or any other type of reading you may
have done for undergrad. McKinney
provides an acronym for how to approach reading law school cases, EMPOWER,
which I find to be a great starting point until reading and briefing cases
becomes second nature. A lot of her tips
are things that I picked up on after a semester of case reading but would have
been helpful to read prior to going to law school. Something I also really liked about this book
is that she included examples of briefing cases at the end of every chapter to
help work on those particular skills discussed in the chapter.
Getting to Maybe-Richard Michael Fischl and
Jeremy Paul
I also highly recommend
reading this book prior to law school or law school exams. It explains how to approach law school exams
in a more in depth way than just stating the IRAC method. It really goes into how to write out a law
school exam answer rather than just saying “It depends.” I like their forks methodology. The authors explain writing an answer by
considering the answer as having two forks that you can go down, picking and
explaining one, and then switching to the other fork. I’ve found that a lot of law school
professors really like answers that include some form of “in response to that
argument, the other party would say…”.
This gets a thumbs up from me.
Open Book-Barry Friedman and John
Goldberg
This is another winner. I think if you really want to know how to
take notes and how to apply what you learn in class to studying and taking
exams, this is the book for you. I know
during my first couple weeks, I noticed that some people really focused on the
minute factual details of a case that really didn’t matter. The authors really explain what to focus on
when reading cases for class and synthesizing the material into something that
is easy to study and memorize. It goes
over case briefing, IRAC, writing exam answers (in depth discussion of each
IRAC component), outlining, multiple choice exams, etc. The book also has a digital component that
has model answers for some of the hypotheticals in the book itself, sample
outlines, class notes, how to read statutes, and even practice exams for all of
the 1L classes. I definitely recommend
this book if you want a whole overview of a law school class from reading
homework to taking exams.
Planet Law School II-Atticus Falcon
I had my qualms about this
book in my initial post. I found the
book to be a good overview of the entire law school process with a few good
points. However, I think it was a little
too depressing about the entire law school experience. Is law school always rainbows and cute
puppies/kittens? No. Have I felt like I wanted to drop out and I
wasn’t cut out for law school? Yes. But I think the author of this book thinks
law school is a huge scam and law school professors really are just in their
ivory towers and don’t care about anything but their jobs. I haven’t really found law school to be that
way, I think professors do actually care about their students and enjoy talking
about everything related to the law. I
can sum up some of the advice that I thought helped me in law school: Buy E&Es because they’re a great way of
reviewing material from class that may be a little confusing and put it in
layman’s terms. Because of the lack of
availability of this book on Amazon, you may want to look to other law school
blogs for much of the helpful advice this book provides.
Three out of four books with
good reviews isn’t bad! Should I do a
part two on these types of reviews? What
law school books would you like me to review as a part of this series. Let me know on Twitter, Insta, or send me an
email below!
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