Law 101: Everything You Need to Know about the American Legal System

By Jay M. Feinman

• Ever heard of Tort Law? Roe V. Wade? The Miranda Warning? What is Constitutional Law, what rights does it protects? How does a lawsuit begin? What happens at trial? What is a criminal act? The answers to those and many other similar questions are in "Law 101" an excellent introduction to the American Legal System.
  
  In nine chapters, organized in questions and answers format, that cover Constituional Law, the litigation process, personal injuries and tort law, businesses, consumers and contract law, property law, criminal law and criminal procedure,the book offers an easy to read and highly educational insight of the legal system, explaining clearly how courts, judges, juries and lawyers operate and work to solve the legal issues that reflect everyday's life.
  
  Well written and covering the basic subjects that every lawyer learns during the first year of Law School, this book is accesible to lay readers and law students alike. Outstanding and useful. A five stars book that will help you to understand the law and many of the legal issues you commonly have to face.
  

• I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the basics of law but does not want to read through tedious, mind-numbing text. This book covers a lot of ground (basically all of the main doctrines of US law) and is entertaining at the same time due to the author's clear / concise narrative and numerous examples.

  From the beginning, Feinman explains that "law is not in the law books" but that law "lives in conduct; it exists in the interactions of judges, lawyers and ordinary citizens". Law is how we interpret it to be at a given time - it is in and of the people. From this and other insights, Feinman has helped me gain a greater appreciation for the US legal system as well as making me a more legal savvy citizen. In this day and age this is important - at one time or another we will all have to consult a lawyer for something.

How To Get Into the Top MBA Programs, 4th Edition

By J.D., Richard Montauk

• This is a very good resource on the business school application process. The book expounds upon three points very well:
  
  1. Know yourself. Understand why you are considering a business school, determine what you expect to get out of it, and identify which programs are best for *your needs*. Be honest with yourself.
  
  Assuming you've determined an MBA program is the way you need to go, you have to determine which offering is most appropriate. Objectively evaluate schools, don't blindly go off of the numerous "rankings." These are purely quantitative and may not be the best fit. (For example, if you want to do marketing and not finance, Northwestern might be a better choice than Wharton.) Evaluate programs, interview alumni and current students, and VISIT campus. Pay attention to any "gut" feel.
  
  2. Market your strengths and weaknesses.
  
  The ideal applicant will have a 4.0 undergraduate GPA, 800 GMAT, speak seventeen languages, served president of IBM, and have several gold medals in swimming. If this doesn't describe you, you're "just folks" (to borrow from Harry Bauld) and need to market yourself.
  
  Montauk has some interesting generalizations for backgrounds (e.g., engineer, sales) and their general strengths and weaknesses.
  
  One valuable suggestion is to choose and manage your recommenders. They should say what they want, and in their own words, but you can help guide the perspectives they emphasize on your candidacy so you come across as a multidimensional applicant.
  
  The essay writing suggestions are generally very good, especially the "angle" that some of the questions are taking. (This is very similar to the "Knock 'em Dead" by Martin Yate.) However, for actually writing your essay, I would strongly recommend reading "On Writing the College Application Essay" by Harry Bauld.
  
  3. Stay on top of the admissions process.
  
  To a great extent, this is really "make sure everyone gets stuff when they should." Provide dossiers for your recommenders, make sure you have a completed application in on time, follow up with people.
  
  Because the application process is competitive, Montauk offers suggestions on reinforcing your candidacy be waitlisted or are called in for an interview.
  
  Throughout each chapter, Montauk includes comments from various directors of admissions. These basically reiterate what the text says and (especially for the US schools) are a regurgitation of things you'd read in the applications packet. For example, "The GMAT score is as important as any other single element in the admissions process." Duh, otherwise it wouldn't be required.
  
  Overall, this is a very good book, offering a lot of perspective on the self-evaluation and application processes.
  
  Other good books to help with MBA admissions and essays: The Elements of Style (Strunk and White) and 65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays.
  

Law School Confidential (Revised Edition): A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience: By Students, for Students

By Robert H. Miller

• This is the key to succeeding in law school. I didn't get the chance to read this book until I got to law school, but it helped me get the job of my dreams. I didn't go to a top tier law school, but I'm working in the field I want in the firm I wanted in the city I wanted. Get this book!
  

• This book came out after my own law-school years, and I read it in search of books to recommend to undergrad friends who were headed to law school.
  
  I can say this: Everything Miller recommends, and that I DID, worked. But everything he recommends, and that I DIDN'T do, I WISH I'd done!

• Wow! This book really hit home for me. I was the unprepared, overconfident and cocky 1L at the start of my first semester of law school in 2001. Needless to say, after only 3 days of orientation, my confidence was exhausted and panic set in. I had no clue of what I was doing, or even why I was in law school in the first place. After weighing my options and having a heart-to-heart with the Dean of Admissions, I decided to defer my enrollment until 2002. This has been one of the best decisions of my life.
  
  After reading Mr. Miller's book, I have come to the realization that law school is a total COMMITMENT; it's not a try; it's not a "taste"; and it will be very unforgiving to those who don't fully prepare themselves for its intellectual rigors.
  
  Mr. Miller meticulously maps out a proven game plan for success. And if you follow his and the mentor's advice, which, by the way, often applies to any goal you set, your success in law school will eventually come to fruition. And you will have learned one of the most important lessons in life. That true success is not gained from a piece of parchment; rather, true success is only gained from within yourself.
  
  My advice is to read this book and find a real reason to commit 3 years of your life to the law. And if you can, then show the world what it has been waiting for and set your course. Otherwise, to use the age-old cliche, "you'll be up a creek without a paddle"! Best wishes.
  

The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible

By David M. Killoran

• This book is extremely comprehensive in every respect... But if you are smart enough to begin your LSAT preparation a few months ahead of time--and are willing to work [hard]--then this book will do the trick. It helped me score a 179 in February.
  
  Before purchasing the Logic Games Bible, I took KAPLAN's $1000 classroom course... Right away, I knew "The Bible" was going to be better than KAPLAN because it used the commonsense approach of setting up games BELOW the questions (where there's actually room to write).
  
  In every respect, The Bible provides a more systematic and organized approach to setting up games than does KAPLAN. Having The Bible's more disciplined and systematic approach to setting up and solving the games proved invaluable on test day. I finished all four games with 9 minutes to spare. You should have seen the confused looks I got when, after only 26 minutes into the Logic Games section, I put my pencil down, raised my hand, and asked to go to the restroom!
  
  Their system paid off. Again, this book will deliver the goods--but like most things in life, you'll only get out of it what you put into it.
  

• There are two things to know about the LSAT before studying for it: (1) at least for native English speakers, the analytic (or "logic games") section of the test is by far the most challenging; and (2) no one can do well on the analytic section without study and practice. Thus the choice of the correct study plan geared toward the analytic/logic games section of the test can make or break your LSAT performance, which in turn can go far toward determining where you go to law school (local vs. regional, regional vs. national, top 15 vs. top 5, etc.).
  
  For some reason, I chose the PowerScore book, and now I'm sitting pretty. This guide has four huge advantages over other guides that I looked over:
  
  (1) the suggested notation is concise, thus leading to less scribbling time and more answering time in the test. This is very important insofar as the logic games section of the LSAT is the most "intensely timed" section of any test that I've ever taken.
  
  (2) the categorization of problem types is accurate and easy to understand. As any guide will tell you, the logic games featured in the LSAT fall into a small set of recognizable types. However, some guides that I've seen posit phalanx of potential problem types, including types of problems that make reference to non-essential attributes like time. This is BAD. A linear problem is a linear problem regardless of whether its linear in time or in space. Anything else is needless confusion.
  
  (3) this guide does NOT propose shortcuts to problem solving. By contrast, other guides that I encountered suggested FROM THE BEGINNING that test takers plan to skip a problem completely in order to save time. This is a supposed shortcut that actually cripples your performance before you've even begun. In reality, there are methods for solving logic game problems, but there are no short cuts.
  
  Use the methods recommended, practice a lot, and then and only then consider skipping anything. (In my LSAT, I answered every problem, scored well, and had a minute or two left over to sharpen my pencil.)
  
  (3) the sample problems are mostly taken from actual LSATs, and the made up problems are true to the LSAT model. Particularly nice is the reference in the back of the book that characterizes EACH published LSAT analytic problem as regards problem type.
  
  In sum, I studied for a month and a half for the LSAT, using the Logic Games Bible as my study guide and LSAC's 10 More Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests for my practice material. I practiced the tests (both in part and in full) under timed conditions. I disregarded the reading comp. and logic sections almost entirely. Result: I scored well enough to get me where I want to go, and suffice it to say I was aiming high from the beginning.