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28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Number One on My List of 3 Must-Have Books, September 22, 2003
This review is from: 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 (Paperback)
A little about me: I'm now in my second year of law school and Purchased both Law School Insider and Law School Confidential last year. I wound up keeping only my copy of Law School Insider, which is a newer and more relevant book for me. 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.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easily the best law school book I've read, December 26, 2002
This review is from: 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 (Paperback)
I bought Law School Insider a few months after starting law school because I was confused by classes but still wanted a shot at glory (good grades and law review). I read it over Thanksgiving and I must say, this is an amazing book! Having been through first semester classes (and exams) myself, I can tell you that this is a completely accurate account of the way things really are in law school. The book's advice helped me to salvage my first semester just in time for exams (fingers crossed for top 10% grades) and has so much insight on how to get what every law student wants next - the right classes, the right job, and a passing bar exam score. 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.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Book About Law School!!!, January 18, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: 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 (Paperback)
As a prospective law school applicant, who will be applying to a Juris Doctor program this year, I read a lot of books about law schools. Law School Insider by Jeremy Horwitz, Esq. (a cum laude graduate of Cornell Law School, who is currently working as an attorney) is by far the best book about a student's life before, during, and after law school. Unlike other books, this book is organized in a straight-forward manner and is well-written. It starts from the Introduction and Preparing for Law School Chapters that guide you through the entire admission process, from selecting a good law school to making educated choices after receiving acceptance letters. Thereafter, the author writes about the first year, memorable first-year summers, two-L, journal elections and intrigue, second-year summers, the third and final year, and the Bar exam. In addition, the book is supplemented by useful Tables on the first-year course schedules across the nation; modern law-related career options and elective specializations; state Bar exam subject matter coverage and MPRE requirements, to name a few. Various Appendixes include the sample writing completion submission and sample class outline excerpts. 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!)
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