Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Not really a fan. Problems:

- I thought Turow, in protecting the identities of many students and professors, distilled them all into way less interesting, one-note caricatures. The urbane, wealthy aristocrat who makes a diligent but unremarkable student. The nervous basket case who constantly sandbags himself yet gets great grades every time. The scrappy Italian kid from Jersey who balks at authority and likes to make his own way. The pretty blonde with crying outbursts whose frequency serves as a barometer for academic pressure. And so on. The professors were worse--the friendly young guy professor, the absent-minded but occasionally brilliant professor, and of course the bullying, intimidating but also undeniably engaging Contracts professor.

- Turow has it pretty good, yet he does an awful lot of complaining. He grouses about employment prospects for lawyers in 1975, which, while the legal market was certainly competitive, I don't think it was anything like as dismal as it is now. Plus, he mentions how steep the price is--3,000 dollars a year--several times, incredulously. Which makes the whole book seem hilariously dated. You know what that is in today's money? 13,000 bucks. 40,000 total for a degree. Yet tuition now at a top school is more like 50,000...per year. Add in living expenses in an area like Boston and you are looking at a quarter million dollars for a JD, if you are unfortunate enough to have to pay sticker price. That's after probably spending something similar during undergrad. So law school is a much dicier proposition now than it was then. End rant.

- I do see how egos and pressure can make law school more competitive than it has to be, and manufacture a lot of artificial work in addition. But weirdly, Turow didn't make the work seem that hard. I expected to come away happy that I would never attend Harvard, not perplexed at the big deal everyone seemed to like to make out of a work load that didn't seem out of control.