Synopses & Reviews
Newsweek calls him "an extraordinarily canny and empathetic observer." In bestseller after bestseller, Turow uses his background as a lawyer to create suspense fiction so authentic it reads with the hammering impact of fact. But before he became a worldwide sensation, Scott Turow wrote a book that is entirely true, the account of his own searing indoctrination into the field of law called...
One L.
The first year of law school is an intellectual and emotional ordeal so grueling that it ensures only the fittest survive. Now Scott Turow takes you inside the oldest and most prestigious law school in the country when he becomes a "One L," as entering students are known at Harvard Law School. In a book that became a national bestseller, a law school primer, and a classic autobiography, he brings to life the fascinating, shocking reality of that first year. Provocative and riveting, One L reveals the experience directly from the combat zone: the humiliations, triumphs, hazings, betrayals, and challenges that will make him a lawyer and forever change Turow's mind, test his principles, and expose his heart.
Review
"A compelling and important book....It should be read by anyone who has ever contemplated going to law school or anyone who has ever worried about being human." The New York Times
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"No description of this unique rite of passage quite matches...One L." Newsweek
Review
"An elegant report from the graduate school battlefield and from the heart."
Boston Sunday Globe
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"Absorbing for the layman as well as the lawyers, One L is compelling and even suspenseful reading." Business Week
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"A fascinating account." Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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"Gripping, candid and straightforward." Sunday Oregonian
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"An important document for those who have not been to law school, Turow makes the experience breathe; for those who have, he recalls it vividly." Chronicle of Higher Education Review
Review
"Exciting." Kansas City Star
About the Author
Scott Turow was born in Chicago in 1949. He graduated with high honors from Amherst College in 1970, receiving a fellowship to Stanford University Creative Writing Center which he attended from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1975 Turow taught creative writing at Stanford. In 1975, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating with honors in 1978. From 1978 to 1986, he was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, serving as lead prosecutor in several high-visibility federal trials investigating corruption in the Illinois judiciary. In 1995, in a major pro bono legal effort, he won a reversal in the murder conviction of a man who had spent 11 years in prison, many of them on death row, for a crime another man confessed to.
Today, he is a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, an international law firm, where his practice centers on white-collar criminal litigation and involves representation of individuals and companies in all phases of criminal matters. He has also written several best-selling novels, including Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, and most recently, Reversible Errors. Turow has been married to Annette Turow, a painter, since 1971.