Great bit of non-fiction from Scott Turow. I had just read Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penaltyand was looking for more non-fiction from him, so I went with his classic.

Great book.

In short, here are my observations:

• What can get you through law school? 1) A love of the law, like Mr. Turow. 2) A prodigious amount of talent, like some of his classmates. 3) A near-sociopathic study habit, like one of his classmates who didn’t talk to anyone while he was studying, or even acknowledge them – it’s a funny scene. 4) A little bit of all of the above!
• One great scene has one of his favorite professors say ‘You will all wield enormous power, more than you realize. You will be able to destroy people’s lives. I hope you use your power to help people, but I know that this is much harder.”
• Another insight is about the law school Socratic method – where a teacher stands a student up and throws question after question at them in front of their classmates. Though it is much-maligned, it is interesting how students report that facing a judge is easier after that. It shows that sometimes in our lives we face situations that we don’t like – that make things easier later on. Comedians are horrible at mocking eachother relentlessly – that makes hecklers easier. Drill sergeants treat their cadets like dirt, and that may save their lives one day in combat.

Though man – this style of teaching does not seem fun.
• One final insight shows the difference between 1Ls and 2Ls. The former work at a feverish pace, but also work incorrectly. Turow spends three days cramming before a test and then little of the material is on the test. He worries about the Socratic stand ups when in reality, it is not that big of a deal in 2nd year. Face it and move on.

Regardless, great tale. I haven’t read any of Turow’s fiction, but after reading these two non-fiction books – I can imagine they are great!

Apologies, apologies, I was busy, I forgot how to read etc etc.

In ‘One L’, Turow recounts his first year at Harvard Law School. The real L was the book itself tho tbh.

I was disappointed with this book because I wanted to read it for so so long but now that I’m done with it I’ve been left with a sense of anticlimax.

It was a very cringey read in parts; I wish Turow had written it as a purely fictional novel because the carry on was so embarrassing and self-serious. It read like a Reddit post that ended with “…and everyone clapped” (after someone answers a question in class correctly or gets a good grade). Calm down, please!

What kinda surprised me was the fact that Turow and his mates - for all their intellect and Harvardism - struggled a lot with some very basic concepts in all their Law modules. This isn’t me being snobby and cocky, some of the things they couldn’t wrap their head around were actually laughable.

There were some good insights and aphorisms from more senior characters in the novel:

• “In learning rules, don’t feel as if you’ve got to release a sense of moral scrutiny… don’t get your heads turned around to the point that you feel because you’re learning a rule, you’ve necessarily taken on the values that produced the rule in the first place.” ✔️ This is a great point and definitely hits the nail on the head of something I personally feel susceptible to.

• “They were all such good people and they’re all so cynical now. They just do everything they have to and they ridicule it at the same time. They all swore the first year they’d never go to corporate firms, and now they took the job because it was sort of expected. And most of them have already promised themselves they’re going to hate it.” ✔️ LOL!

I also think Turow did a good job at demonstrating the more cut-throat tendencies of Law students, even if he does tend to be a bit dramatic:

• “A number of people now admitted delving into [a book written by the professor] and most reported that much of their commentary in his classes seemed to come from there”. ✔️ nothing wrong with it, imo.

• “It is considered bad form around the law school to hoard a book that 140 others might be looking for. I ignored that.” ✔️ guilty!

• “‘People are scared and resentful of us?‘ he asked nonchalantly.” ✔️ bit funny.

• “I want the advantage. I want the competitive advantage. I don’t give a damn about anybody else - I want to do better than them.” ✔️ hmmm... anyway…

But overall, despite some cool moments, the rest was bad. Don’t know how his wife puts up with him. She’s a saint and he’s kinda awful. When she tries to ask him how he’s getting on he always replies “I’m not sure you can understand, babe”…

why i oughta…

Brilliant. If I wasn’t so set on becoming a scientist, this book would make me want to attend law school.

Who knew a book about studying would ever have me so enthralled...

This was a very entertaining book. I've never studied the law, but I'm possibly interested in doing such. Definately not at Harvard!

Mrs. Turow is the real MVP.

Dear Dad,

Thanks for giving me One L to read! You rarely impress upon me the need to read any one book in particular, so when you put this book in my hands I actually put down the book I had recently started and instantly began devouring Turow’s memoir about his first year of law school. I don’t do that often. It stresses me out to put a book aside unfinished in favor of another book (which is also ironic considering the content of One L — it’s all about stress!). One L was also a little unusual for me because it’s an older book — first published in 1977. I typically don’t read books written between 1955 and 2000, not as a matter of strategy but rather an accident of practice.

I had a lot of thoughts about this book! I read this book slowly because I was really paying a lot of attention, stopping to think about it, stopping to discuss it, before starting a new page. I think Turow fully realizes all of his goals in this memoir — he thoroughly conveys the rigors, terrors, and hysteria of his first year at Harvard Law School. Beyond simply relating his experience, Turow immerses his reader in the experience of law school. He doesn’t candy-coat it; he tells it all — good, bad, and neurotic.

Aside from pondering Turow’s experience of law school, I also found myself thinking about why you put this book in my hands. Probably so I would understand what you, too, experienced when you were in law school. I’ve always been proud to say my dad is an attorney. In my little kid (and big kid) brain, this meant you were smart. And that meant that I could be smart, too. But I have a whole new respect for those smarts after reading Turow’s account of the demands — both intellectual and emotional — of law school.

You probably also gave me this book to read because you know that I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer — that I still think about being a lawyer from time to time. This book gave me a lot to think about. I’ve always figured that I have the rational mind to think through legal problems, and I love speaking and writing (and noble causes). So I’d be a great lawyer, right? After One L, I don’t know. It’s possible if not probable that, indeed, I shouldn’t have been a lawyer after all! There are a lot of still-appealing factors. I think the mental exercises are fascinating. I think reasoning out the law based on precedents that often contradict one another is a stimulating way to spend time. I love researching. I love writing. However, throughout One L, Turow emphasizes “learning to love the law”. .. and I don’t know that I ever would. Not in that way. Actually, I love education! Thinking through educational issues excites me and stimulates my mind. I am interested to talk law, but I adore talking school. For maybe the first time in my life, reading One L gave me a real sense that I didn’t somehow miss my legal calling … however alluring I might find it.

Thanks for a great read, Dad. It made me see your legal education in an entirely different light.

Love,

Rebekah

Good read, still don't want to be a lawyer.

This book was written forever ago and while I typically make my class read it - it's been a few years since I read it so I decided to revisit. . . and it's still timely. I swear reading this book brings back PTSD of the first year of law school for me. Do I think that there is some embellishment in this? Yes. Do I think that the embellishment portrays the first year of law school incorrectly? No. So while it was written forever ago the change that happens during that first year is still a real thing happening to most first year law students. The amount of comparison and concern about how you measure up to all your other classmates is real and while I do think that is part of the process of law school - I like to think that had I read this prior to law school I would have been a bit more prepared for it and I would have had some systems in place to gracefully handle it better.

This is a fascinating account of the author's first year at Harvard Law School!

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this book, especially because it was for a particularly hard class. I just know that Nicky Morris was the professor everyone had a bit of a crush on... not gonna lie.

Yes, I am in the minority here. Turow writes well but I wasn't able to stay consistently engaged, partly because I've never been to law school. I have been in a programme that was just as intense that had its own issues, but it was so very different that that the intensity and time consumption were the only shared factors.

That said, this was a very important book in its day and I think that even today anyone considering law school should read it for the history of what was going on. I am sure that law school is still very intense, demanding and time consuming with many challenges, but at least one of the points made in the book was just beginning to be changed in a few progressive law schools at that time.