Synopses & Reviews
Law school can be a joyous, soul-transforming challenge that leads to a rewarding career. It can also be an exhausting, self-limiting trap. It all depends on making smart decisions. When every advantage counts,
A Student’s Guide to Law School is like having a personal mentor available at every turn.
As a recent graduate and an appellate lawyer, Andrew Ayers knows how high the stakes are—he’s been there, and not only did he survive the experience, he graduated first in his class. In A Student’s Guide to Law School he shares invaluable insight on what it takes to make a successful law school journey. Originating in notes Ayers jotted down while commuting to his first clerkship with then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and refined throughout his first years as a lawyer, A Student’s Guide to Law School offers a unique balance of insider’s knowledge and professional advice.
Organized in four parts, the first part looks at tests and grades, explaining what’s expected and exploring the seven choices students must make on exam day. The second part discusses the skills needed to be a successful law student, giving the reader easy-to-use tools to analyze legal materials and construct clear arguments.
The third part contains advice on how to use studying, class work, and note-taking to find your best path. Finally, Ayers closes with a look beyond the classroom, showing students how the choices they make in law school will affect their career—and even determine the kind of lawyer they become.
The first law school guide written by a recent top-ranked graduate, A Student’s Guide to Law School is relentlessly practical and thoroughly relevant to the law school experience of today’s students. With the tools and advice Ayers shares here, students can make the most of their investment in law school, and turn their valuable learning experiences into a meaningful career.
Review
"If you have any doubt about your level of skill, interest, or readiness to study the law, purchase and read a copy of The Bramble Bush-The Classic Lectures on the Law and Law School, now updated and published anew in 2008 by Oxford University Press. Law school is a bramble bush. You need to prepare yourself for the reality of its experience. [Llewellyn's] The Bramble Bush offers rich and nuanced answers to questions about what the law is, the case system, the nature of law school, and your legal studies beyond the first year. You will greatly benefit if you let Professor Llewellyn (with Professor Sheppard's essential assistance) take you by the hand for this journey."
--Brad Dobeck, President, PrelawAdvisor.com
"Karl Llewellyn was one of the greatest legal minds of the twentieth century, and The Bramble Bush is one of his classics-illuminating and even indispensable reading for each generation of law students and lawyers, and wonderful for general readers as well." -- Cass R. Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago Law School
"...one of the greatest works ever written on the nature of law and legal education. In a sometimes sharp, sometime whimsical, always brilliant analysis, Llewellyn offers invaluable insights to anyone contemplating the study of law." -- Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago Law School
"The Bramble Bush reads to me today as it read to me three decades ago as a law student: fresh, brassy, irreverent, impudent, and brilliant. To suggest that the study of law should focus on how and why judges and officials and lawyers in the real world actually behave in our legal system! To suggest that law is not simply an arid matrix of rules and theories and principles! The nerve! In this time in the history of legal education in which law schools are reinventing themselves, we would all do well to read The Bramble Bush again and again." --Rodney A. Smolla, Dean and Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Review
"At the beginning of law school, everything feels like the hardest part. You dont see things clearly yet. You dont know whats important and what isnt; what to focus on and what to skim. Andrew B. Ayers wrote A Students Guide to Law School to help law students see those choices clearly."
Review
"Andrew Ayers has provided a straightforward and witty guide to getting the most out of legal education for the right reasons: to develop legal competence, cultivate professional judgment, and become a lawyer of credit. An admirable book."
Review
“A Student's Guide to Law School eloquently captures the journey of the novice to the professional by focusing on how to immerse oneself in the culture of law. Ayers aptly delves into approaches to class work and studying for examinations without losing sight of the larger goal of becoming a practice-ready and ethical professional—a connoisseur of the law.”
Synopsis
For over 70 years, prospective and enrolled law students have been assigned to read a text that prepares them what they are about to encounter. That text is
Bramble Bush. This classic answers questions that all students have when starting law school, and virtually takes them inside the classroom like no other text. It gives factual examples, detailed information, and practical explanations.
Bramble Bush is required reading in numerous law schools and is recommended by many Law School Deans. An outgrowth of Professor Llewellyn's introductory lectures at Columbia University School of Law, Bramble Bush continues to be the best introduction to the study of law for both potential and enrolled law students.
Synopsis
For over seventy years, there has been one book that law students have read to prepare for what they were about to encounter. That book is
The Bramble Bush. After all these years and many imitators,
The Bramble Bush remains one of the most popular introductions to the law and its study.
Llewellyn introduces students to what the law is, how to read cases, how to prepare for class, and how justice in the real world relates to the law. Although laws change every year, disputes between people haven't altered all that much since Llewellyn first penned The Bramble Bush, and the process of moving from private dispute to legal conflict still follows the patterns he described.
Moreover, the steps of a legal dispute, from arguments to verdict, to opinion, to review, to appeal, to opinion have changed little in their significance or their substance. Cases are still the best tools for exploring the interaction of the law with individual questions, and the essence of what law students must learn to do has persisted. If anything, many of the points Llewellyn argued in these lectures were on the dawning horizon then but are in their mid-day fullness now.
Synopsis
For over 70 years, prospective and enrolled law students have been assigned to read a text that prepares them for what they are about to encounter. That text is The Bramble Bush.
This classic answers questions that all students have when starting law school, and virtually takes them inside the classroom like no other text. K.N. Llewellyn offers understanding on the context of law, techniques on how to study the law without losing heart, and how to engage in the material
within the classroom.
The Bramble Bush is required reading at many top tier law schools and is recommended by many Law School Deans for the insight it provides to new students. An outgrowth of Professor Llewellyn's introductory lectures at Columbia University School of Law, The Bramble Bush continues to be the best
introduction to the study of law for both potential and enrolled law students.
About the Author
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn was born on May 22, 1893 in Seattle, Washington, but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 16, Llewellyn studied for two years in Germany before entering Yale College in 1911. Later on, he attended Yale Law School, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. In
1920, Llewellyn became a lawyer for the New York City Bank, and soon joined the prestigious corporate law firm of Shearman and Sterling. In 1925, Llewellyn joined the law school faculty of Columbia Law School, where he taught the concept of "Legal Realism" and made numerous contributes to the
Uniform Commercial Code. After twenty-six years of teaching at Columbia, Llewellyn moved to the University of Chicago Law School, with his wife and fellow professor Soia Mentschikoff, who later went on to become dean of University of Miami School of Law. Llewellyn remained in Chicago until his
death on February 13, 1962.
This edition includes an introduction by its editor Stephen Sheppard, the William H. Enfield Professor of Law at University of Arkansas's School of Law. He is a faculty adviser to the International Law Society, the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, the Environmental Law Society, and the H.L.A.
Hart Society. His service includes enlistment and commission in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve and membership in the Iraq Advisory Group of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, in 2005.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Way Youre Judged
1. What Exams Want
2. Seven Choices Youll Make on Exam Day
3. What Youll Need by Exam Day
Part II: The Skills Youll Need
4. Distilling the Law
5. Issue Spotting
6. Argument
Part III: The Work Youll Do
7. Reading
8. Speaking in Class
9. Listening in Class
10. Notes and Outlines
11. Ten Ways to Use a Study Group
12. Beyond Traditional Classes
Part IV: The Lawyer Youll Become
13. Judgment Calls
14. What Lawyers Do
15. The Hats Lawyers Wear
16. The Person under the Hat
Conclusion: The Questions Youll Ask
Acknowledgments
Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Author
Sources for Epigraphs
Notes
Index