Confidential Law School Review

The Law School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience, By Students, For Students has been called a “must have for anyone attending or considering law school” by The Houston Lawyer, and is a book that can be found on every law student’s bookshelf.

Law School Confidential is considered the “little black book” of law schools in the United States. Rather than being a simple guide to study tips and test preparation, this book is intended to be a comprehensive guide to the entire law school experience. It guides the reader through what it’s like to be inside a law school: surviving the first year and the 1L exams, the summer law internship, the selection interviews after graduation. The author frequently uses the experiences of former law students to clarify his points, and at that he is quite effective.

The book begins with a series of lengthy chapters that guide the reader through the process of entering law school. This “beginner’s guide” is comprehensive and well written, and does a good job of introducing the reader to law school and its lifestyle. However, one feels that more could be spent on how to actually choose which school to apply to.

Some very useful information comes in the form of the rating curves at each individual school, and which school has the pass-fail rating available as an option. For most freshmen, this information can be vital; the first year is easily the most difficult.

The book emphasizes the fact that the best and most useful advice and tips often come from fellow students and not from professors. In most schools, 2L and 3L students are the go-to kids: teachers are often too busy to entertain individual students or not open enough to share information.

The book’s strongest point, and one that has made it so popular with most law students, is its no-nonsense, conversational tone. Most law books tend to spew legal gibberish at their readers, a tradition among lawyers themselves, but this book keeps the wordiness to a minimum and focuses on providing frank information that can be really helpful to those thinking of attending. to law school.

Where this book fails is that it can sometimes be too basic, giving the impression of preaching. Some of the study tips are downright basic, things most people have learned in their undergraduate years. Also, the book tries to push certain tactics that may not be applicable to everyone.

However, as Houston Lawyer says, this book is definitely a must for anyone thinking of becoming a lawyer. As the New York Law Journal put it, this is a “useful and valuable book.”