 | Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About the American Legal System by Jay M. Feinman
Buy used from: $2.81 Casebooks are extremely detail-oriented. As a beginner, you need "wide-angle" introductory material. This is the best introduction to the curriculum of the first year of law school, with 15-20 page overviews of each major branch of the common law. Read this the summer before your 1L year.
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 | The Sex.Com Chronicles: A White-Hat Lawyer's Journey to the Dark Side of the Internet by Charles Carreon
Buy new: $18.99 / Used from: $17.09 The most interesting book ever written about civil procedure. This should replace the Buffalo Creek Disaster as the primary supplement for all 1L CivPro classes.
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 | Business Law (Barron's Business Review Series) by J.D. Emerson Robert W.
Buy new: $12.91 / Used from: $0.28 If you encountered this book in a business program before law school, you're lucky. If, like me, you were a liberal arts undergrad, you should read this book during the summer before law school and refer to it again during every business law class you take.
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 | The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) by Bryan A. Garner
Buy new: $34.88 / Used from: $30.00 Style is not more important than substance, but without it no one will read your substance. The dirty little secret of the legal world is how many briefs are lightly "skimmed" by judges. Legal writing isn't data-entry, it's high art. Keep this by your side when you start writing for work.
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 | Torts in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series) by Edward J. Kionka
Buy new: $27.00 / Used from: $8.95 The Nutshell series is the "for Dummies" of the legal world - a brief and inexpensive, but still sophisticated and legally correct, introduction to the law in one area. As to any given topic, they are more detailed than Law 101 by an order of magnitude. Useful for finding the significance of a given case without reading the case (which is a total waste of time). Skim before you take the class.
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 | Civil Procedure: Examples & Explanations 5th edition by Joseph W. Glannon
Buy used from: $3.50 E&E's are law problem workbooks and the best study aids available. Work through the problems to learn the nuance in the material. Not all subjects lend themselves to the "problem method," though, so check the reviews first. Use this in conjunction with (or even instead of) the casebook.
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 | High Court Summaries on Civil Procedures (Keyed to Friedenthal, Ninth Edition by West
Buy new: $35.00 / Used from: $10.00 Case summaries dissect the text of the case for you, separating the procedural posture from the factual background, the dicta, the holding, and (the only part that matters) the blackletter rule. This is just a time-saver, and it's expensive, but at least try one.
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 | Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court by Edward Lazarus
Buy new: $13.50 / Used from: $0.48 This is the best book ever written about SCOTUS (which you will learn is the Supreme Court of the United States) - the perfect blend of scandalous gossip and intellectual stimulation. Read this before law school to get an insight into the sort of stuff lawyers talk about at cocktail parties.
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 | Due Process of Law: A Brief History by John V. Orth
Buy new: $9.95 / Used from: $2.24 Constitutional law is the sole exception to the general rule that knowledge of history is totally irrelevant to law school. The best introduction to a concept that can be bewildering abstract, particularly in its "substantive" form. It is also wonderfully brief and to the point, which is something you will come to appreciate.
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 | Liability by Peter W. Huber
Buy new: $20.00 / Used from: $1.98 Another cocktail party book. Whether you agree with the author's thesis, this will bring you up to speed on the policy debate in contemporary tort law and it leads you to all sorts of other sources. Fun for context, but nonessential.
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 | Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Second Edition (University Casebook Series) by Eugene Volokh
Buy used from: $11.30 Learn legal writing from someone who does it for fun. This is not just another "how to make law review" for the shallow and ambitious, it's a full guide to publishing in the legal academy. This contains information you'll find no where else. Skim this before law school, read it before law review write-on competition, and return to it throughout your publishing career.
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 | Law School Competitions in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series) by Larry L. Teply
Buy used from: $4.52 At most law schools there are now more competitions than students, making it easy for the determined student to snatch a feather for the cap - and maybe some money to boot. Law review and moot court are still the gold standard resume builders, but publications, writing prizes, merit scholarships and mock trial can also help distinguish you in the eyes of employers.
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 | Inference and Implication
Buy used from: $1.24 Take a course on informal logic as an undergrad, especially one that includes argument diagramming. But don't bother with symbolic logic or circuits or any of that crap.
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 | Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.01 At some point, you should also teach yourself to diagram sentences. In legal writing, grammar is crucial. This is more about clarity than class distinction, but either way you'll feel stupid when some blue blood judge asks you: "to what, counsellor, does your pronoun refer?" Diagramming gives you a snappy answer. (And if the courtroom has a chalkboard you can really zing 'em.)
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 | Legally Blonde
Buy new: $12.49 / Used from: $0.51 Yes, it really is the best film ever made about law school. Maybe the only good film ever made about law school...
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 | I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max
Buy used from: $3.40 The Tucker Max stories saved my life. When you get depressed because you didn't get an offer from a major Silicon Valley firm, read the story of the guy who did, and threw it away in an orgy of beer and sexual misconduct. Tucker Max is the defiler of the holy temples of law school culture. He will help you to pierce through the veil of maya. Read this if you read nothing else on this list.
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