Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Right on target (almost), June 24, 2005
I read Planet Law School in the summer of 1998 when the book was brand new, in the months before I began my legal studies. It was invaluable. I went to a "Top 10" law school (not literally, but rather as the term is defined in the book) and found the cynical advice to be on point. Law school is a business. Administrations are more interested in attracting and keeping top professors (and in soliciting donations from wealthy/influential alumni) than they are in ensuring their graduates will find fulfilling careers that also enable them to repay their crushing student loans. Planet Law School also accurately describes the socio-academic atmosphere at law schools - the contagious stress and anxiety, bordering on hysteria; the social stratification that occurs based upon class rank after first year grades are issued; the extreme difficulty those with mediocre or low grades have in obtaining respectable and well-paying employment through on-campus interviews. The book is less helpful (but still very enlightening) when it comes to its discussion on how to prepare for and do well in law school. I disagree with the author's theory that virtually any law student who follows his system and works hard will be able to excell in law school. I believe this is because, mistakenly, the author makes Black Letter Law and Thinking Like a Lawyer seem paramount. At least where I went to law school, these items were only half the battle. I had good friends who were in the top of my class and we often were enrolled in the same courses with the same professors. They consistently received top marks; mine were almost always mediocre. However, when comparing our final exam responses after the fact, it often turned out our responses were substantively identical (same points of law, same reasoning, same conclusions). The differences were our writing styles and the fact that my friends consistently delved into collateral issues that, while not responding to the "call of the question," were apparently topics of interest for the professor. Sometimes, my friends' responses virtually ignored the call of the question and they still Am-Jur'ed the course. (By the time I realized this, First Year was over; my grades rose dramatically by the end of Second Year, but in fall of Third Year most employers were not looking to hire 3L's.) While the author of Planet Law School does allude to the importance knowing each professor's "agenda," this crucial component of law school preparation should be more heavily emphasized in his book - even more so than "Black Letter Law" and "Thinking Like a Lawyer." After all, at any reputable law school virtually every student will walk into final exams knowing Black Letter Law backwards and forwards. To distinguish yourself (and earn top grades) you have to also appeal to and work in (no matter how tangentially) the professor's pet topics of interest or areas of research. As a post-script, the author and the law schools share a similar failing: They both fail to warn students about "insurance defense" law firms, which require billable hours comparable to the "Big Firms" but offer half the pay, a fraction of the chance to specialize in a practice area, and none of the respect. (The "clients" of such firms, insurance companies, also tend to treat their counsel as the enemy and will begrudge every tenth of an hour billed for.) To the uninitiated 2L or 3L, these firms often appear almost indistinguishable from the "Big Firms." Law students should be subtly warned to avoid insurance defense practice to the fullest extent they can, and instead seek government or boutique practice work in a speciality they enjoy so that they can eventually become well-respected practitioners in a field of specialty.
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43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
First Semester Grades are In..., January 25, 2004
By A Customer
I wrote a review of PLS before I hit law school, and since I now have a semester under my belt, I figured I'd update my thoughts on this particular tome.
First off, I should mention that I just got my first semester grades back, and I am in the top 5% of my class. I'm not going to gush like a schoolgirl and say I owe it all to PLS--after all, I worked hard, and I feel like I earned my grades. But more importantly, I worked SMART, and I think that is where PLS helped me the most. The case method can be a bit of a minefield, and I saw lots of 1L's worrying more about knowing the facts of these cases than knowing the rules that the cases illustrate. By and large, these are the same 1L's who are looking a little morose now that grades are out. I've heard a lot of 1L's promising themselves that they won't get as caught up in the details of the cases this semester; that they'll buy some commercial outlines and worry more about the big picture this time around. That's definitely a step in the right direction, but they'll still have their first semester grades hanging around their necks like an albatross. I'm glad I read PLS, because for all its faults, it taught me the lessons that a lot of 1L's only learned by getting reamed by their first semester exams. It taught me that knowing the cases backwards and forwards will not earn you good grades, and that sounding smart in class doesn't count for a thing. It taught me that the person who studies ten hours per week can get better grades than the person who studies twenty hour per week, if he's getting more out of every hour of study. For me, these lessons have made all the difference between working smart and just spinning my wheels on busy work.
Again, PLS has its faults. It's too long, because Falcon does a lot of ranting, and it becomes redundant after a while. It's poorly edited and has a lot of typos. And some of the law school horror stories bear no relation to the law school I attend. But that doesn't mean that all the info is bogus. You just have to use your brain a bit to separate the wheat from the chaff. Anyone who says that this is a bad book simply because some things are over-the-top or exaggerated is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you don't like his suggestion that you shouldn't buy the casebooks, well, buy the casebooks!! That's what I do (I buy them used over the internet for 1/3 what I'd pay at the university bookstore, of course). Stripped down to its core, the PLS message is about questioning everything, from the concept of the case method to the professors' pedagogical style to the bookstore's policy of charging $100 for a casebook and then buying it back for $15. And to me, that means even questioning PLS itself.
So if you simply want to be a sheep who obediently follows the rest of the herd, skip PLS and buy one of the 150-page feel-good books instead. You don't necessarily need PLS to do well, although following the pack is a good way to wind up in the middle of the pack. But for those who want to question things to see if maybe there's a better way to do it, for those who don't want to blindly follow conventional wisdom, and for those who don't want to take any chances with the all-important first year, give PLS a try. Adapt it to your own needs. Question anything in PLS that you don't agree with. Those are the attitudes that will set you apart from the pack.
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118 of 135 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A law school necessity., August 14, 1999
By A Customer
I finished my second year of law school, I made law review, I read Planet Law School when it first came out, and I've recommended it to many friends. One friend mentioned that she wouldn't buy it because of a review on Amazon. I was curious, so I took a look. I can't believe we're talking about the same book. Many of my friends from law school did not make law review. Some of them are smarter than me. This book isn't about professors or "making friends" or any of that. It's about taking responsibility for your legal education. It's about preparing yourself, and about your attitude. I owe my success to Planet Law School, and to Wentworth Miller's program recommended in the book. In fact, I continue to read it again every month or so. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is considering going to law school. I would give it six stars if I could.
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