3 Books You Should Read Before Starting Law School

Your summer before law school is about to begin, and we’ve got some books to add to your reading list. With your 1L year right around the corner, it’s natural to begin to panic. Are you ready to be a law student? Do you know the difference between law school and undergrad exams? Are your time management skills up to par? We get it. Being a top law student means being prepared. Below are three books you should read before starting law school this fall.

Free Downloadable PDF: The 1L Law School Supplies Checklist

Navigating Your 1L Year

The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About the Law

The Legal Analyst is a book about how to think like a lawyer. It presents ideas that will help you analyze legal questions of all kinds, and illustrates them with many examples from the courses you will take during your first year of law school. The book will help you understand the kinds of insights that law professors like to see in exam answers. It will also will make law school, and the practice of law, more interesting. Brian Leiter, of the University of Chicago Law School, says: “The one book I recommend to students who ask what to read before starting law school is Ward Farnsworth’s The Legal Analyst.” The author of the book, Ward Farnsworth, is Dean of the University of Texas School of Law.

Preparing for the Law School Experience

You may have seen this book on our Law School Supplies List. Written by students, Law School Confidential walks you through the entire law school experience from application to graduation. Use this book as a guide throughout law school. You will find yourself turning to it throughout each semester and using it as a resource for a positive law school experience.

Bracing Yourself for Exams

Getting to Maybe is an important book to read to demystify law school exams. Law school exams are extremely different from exams in undergrad. Reading this book will help you get in the mind-set of a law student, and have you start thinking like a lawyer. The book focuses on improving performance and provides a blueprint to exam taking strategies and success tactics. This is a “must read” for all incoming 1L students.

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