Categories: Advice, Practicing Law
Tags: books to read before law school, lawyer book list, pre-law reading list
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So, it’s been pointed out to me that there are a few pre-law reading lists coming up on blogs right now. Here are the highlights:
http://blog.clearadmit.com/law/2011/07/guest-post-from-anna-ivey-pre-law-summer-reading/
http://legalcareers.about.com/od/educationandtraining/a/prelawreading.htm
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/07/developing-an-i.html
AWomaninLawSchool summer reading list:
http://awomaninlawschool.blogspot.com/2008/05/pre-law-school-reading-list.html
I looked at them, and for the most part I think the suggestions are (1) repetitive of what your law schools are going to tell you to read (unnecessarily), (2) pretentious, (3) not grounded in the reality of what you’re getting yourself into by going to law school and becoming an attorney. Maybe I’m just deep into the book I’m writing (to be released this fall) to help you decide upon and act upon your legal career, and maybe reading “Getting to Maybe” (and being the author’s research assistant in law school) just scarred me for life, but I’d rather you spend your summer reading books that will motivate you to hustle, get you to start thinking about how business works, how people hire, to start networking with attorneys and colleagues immediately, and to start exploring different areas of law.
The 6Ps of the BIG 3 for Job Seeking JDs by Amanda Ellis (@aellislegal)- a guide with concrete tips for social networking and other ways of building connections, specifically for lawyers (which is who you have to start thinking like – a lawyer)
Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law School & Beyond by Kevin Houchin (@kevinhouchin)- a quick little book about how law school can help you develop as a person if you approach it the right way
Make it Your Own Law Firm by Spencer Marc Aronfeld (@aronfeld) – this will get you thinking about yourself as an entrepreneur and will help you see through to the purpose of law school when you are mired in the Socratic Method
24 Hours with 24 Lawyers by Jasper Kim (@jasperkim) – if you don’t know what lawyers really do or what their lives are really like, this is a great place to start
Categories: LSAT, LSAT Prep
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome!
The following is a guest post by Douglas Groene, an attorney who earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He has been tutoring students preparing for the ACT, SAT, LSAT, GRE, and GMAT for over a decade, and still takes a limited number of private students on Long Island. He is also the founder of http://www.pencilnerd.com a blog about standardized tests, featuring test prep news, commentary, tips, and product reviews.
Very early in my tutoring career, I realized the power of the score report. It’s probably the single best weapon in the big test prep companies’ arsenal. The major companies can give you instant feedback on every detail of your practice test performance. How did you do on matching games? What percent of parallel reasoning argument questions did you get right? Is your performance on assumption questions improving?
Score reports allow you to constantly improve your technique based on feedback, and to sharply focus your study time on the areas that need the most work. Because I wanted to bring this powerful tool to every student and tutor, I created the SCORE MY LSAT page.
Just enter your answers to an LSAT preptest (the real, past LSAT tests published by LSAC), and the program will instantly generate a detailed score report, similar to one you would get from BigPrep. Right now the program goes up to Preptest 38, and I will be adding the rest of the preptests in the coming weeks.
In addition to giving your raw and scaled scores and section stats, the score reports produce attractive bar graphs that depict your performance on each question type within games, arguments, and reading comprehension.
Of course, the score reports are not official and depend on my own categorization of the questions. In some cases, questions are hard to pigeonhole into a single type. For example, a question might ask “which one of the following principles lends the greatest support to the argument?” Is it a principle question or a strengthen question?
In many cases it’s a judgment call, but I tried to be as consistent as possible. I am sure there are a few errors, but luckily about 90% of LSAT questions fit unambiguously into a single category. With feedback for each question type, students can monitor their progress from test to test and allocate their study time accordingly. I hope that students (and tutors) will use the scoring program to get the most out of their LSAT preptests.
Categories: Uncategorized
36 Comments »
Ok, now I need YOUR help.
I wrote a new book. I interviewed 300 lawyers (and added my own pithy insights) to share with you everything you should know before deciding to go to law school. The book covers:
- where to go to law school
- what to do during law school in order to have a job when you get out
- what different areas of law really are all about and how to decide the right path for you
- how much money lawyers make
- how hard they work.
This book has EVERYTHING you need to know before deciding that law school and a career in law are the right path for you, and to help you make smart career decisions. It’s only missing one thing: a title.
PLEASE HELP. I am offering a prize for best title. It’s a really good prize, I just haven’t decided what it is yet. But the better the idea, the better the reward because I need something brilliant.
My first book is called, “The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert.” A client came up with it and I loved it. She got full credit in the book in addition to a fabulous prize.
GIVE ME YOUR BEST SHOT!!! Please send me title suggestions under the comment section of this website. And I’m on a deadline. Today is Monday, July 18 and I want all ideas by THIS FRIDAY, July 22nd.
BRING IT!
Ann K. Levine, Esq., former director of law school admissions for two ABA approved law schools, is a law school admission consultant and owner of Law School Expert,
