Customer Reviews

Inside the Law Schools: A Guide by Students for Students (Goldfarb, Sally F//Inside the Law Schools)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have read the previous comments on the 5th edition. It gets worse, I went to the library found edition of this book from early 1980's. It has the same notes, comments, and phrases about each school as the current edition! I think alot has changed in 20 years, but the authors are apparently too lazy to research.

Despite the previous reviews, I actually found this book to be very helpful. It gave me a much better feel for the schools that I was looking at applying to, which is more than I can say for the endless dry statistics found in other books.

Two drawbacks, though. 1)Many schools were not covered in this book. 2)In some of the articles, the information seemed outdated.

Other than that, a pretty good guide to law schools.

Not having read the earlier edition I can't speak to what the other reviewers said about the 7th edition not containing any fresh material...but I can say, that I found the reviews to be well written, and more importantly on just what I wanted to know about the law schools reviewed.

I'd been looking around for a guide that would give insight into the atmosphere, types of students and focus of various law schools and hadn't been able to find much beyond books filled with lists of statistics.

Although, I wouldn't use this book as 'the definitive guide' - especially now that I know it hasn't really been updated - I think its reviews are well-written and give good overviews of the kinds of human aspects of a school that really interest prospective law school students when selecting a school.

This is a very useful tool in the Law School application process. The 2-4 page descriptions of each school give you some added insight into schools you might be interested in that you can't get anywhere else.

The one thing holding this book back is that it is ancient... the most recent edition was published in 1998. The law school world has changed drastically since then--the admissions process has gotten FAR more competitive, job prospects for lawyers have gone south, and technology plays a much bigger role in the classroom experience.

For the most up-to-date info on admissions stats, use the official guide over at LSAC.org. This book is still worth reading for the school descriptions, but don't trust it as your only resource for choosing schools.

The information is obviously outdated and in some cases it seems to be incorrect. For instance, in the chapter on the University of Chicago, the book says this school relies on interviews with applicants. To my knowledge, this is not true. Northwestern (also located near Chicago) relies on applicant interviews--not the University of Chicago. I found the chapter on the University of Minnesota amazingly inaccurate.

I didn't believe the earlier writer who suggested it wasn't worth purchasing this book if you had already read the 5th edition; I wish I had. This edition is exactly the same as the earlier version - same phrases, same schools (do you know, it only has 112 of 179 ABA approved law schools featured?). If you're thinking about buying this book, I would recommend that you go to the library instead and read whichever version they happen to have on hand, even if it dates back to the early 90s. On the other hand, if you don't know anything about the reputation of particular schools, this book can be helpful in giving you a snapshot view. If you do know something about the reputation of certain schools, you may find, as I did, that this book is more of a confirmation of everything else I had heard/read about those schools -- it didn't seem to offer any fresh insights.

A friend loaned me the 5th edition of this book, which was published in 1991. It was a good book, but I wanted to read the "updated" edition so I would be familiar with how the law schools had changed in the six years in between. While reading the latest edition, I noticed that the only info that had been updated was the stats--most of the reviews and anecdotes about each school were the same--and I mean word for word! I guess things just don't change much in law school. I suggest spending your money on the LSAC guide to law schools, instead. Or send away for law school catalogs from each school--they're free and at least they are really updated each year!

There is one great thing about this book. It has the addresses and phone numbers of many (though not all) of the ABA approved law schools in the USA. If you want any other meaningful information, I would recommend another book. After reading comments like "They have a Black Law Students Association," or "The best students are offered a spot at the prestigious Law Review," for pretty much every school in the book, one begins to realize that their profile of each school tends to be generic and impersonal. As previous reviews have noted, some of the material is also outdated.

One specific example... Their profile of Boston College Law, which is one of only two Jesuit law schools in the US, fails to mention this important fact. The BCLS literature dedicates the the first five or so pages of its current bulletin to explaining the importance of the Jesuit tradition to the School... meanwhile "Inside the Law Schools" publicizes the fact that BCLS has a "mercifully short application form" as one of the features that makes it unique. Give me a break!!!

Excellent resource for applying to law school; helped me narrow my scope; saved time applying to schools that would be a good match for me. Highly recommended.