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 thinking about law school” by The Houston Lawyer, and it 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 with study tips and test preparation, this book is intended to be a comprehensive guide to the entire law school experience. Walks the reader through what it’s like to be inside law school: surviving freshman year and 1L exams, summer law internship, post-graduation interviews. The author frequently uses the experiences of former law students to clarify his points, and in 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 grading curves at each individual school, and which school has the pass fail grade available as an option. For most first-year students, this information can be vital; the first year is easily the most difficult.

The book emphasizes the fact that the best and most useful tips and advice often come from fellow students and not from teachers. 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 detail to a minimum and focuses on providing candid information that can be really helpful to those thinking of studying law. or attend him.

Where this book fails is that it can be too basic at times, coming across as preachy. Some of the study tips are downright basic, stuff 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.”