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Turow paints a largely accurate picture of the life of a first-year student at a top American law school. He describes his gifted, high achieving, and insufferably competitive peers and professors to a T. Those who have survived the ordeal will immediately recall their own struggles to comprehend the first few cases they read and briefed, the hours, the jargon, and generally navigating unknown waters. (Should I buy a hornbook or stick with the thousands of pages of assigned casebook reading? Is it useful to join a study group? What's the Law Review? etc.) The atmosphere, saturated with fear of failure (read mediocrity), will resonate with any who have competed at a high level or longed for excellence.

The book is about people searching to find relevance. Here, the search takes place in the increasingly silly and mundane legal world. Many characters and some of Turow's points of emphasis strike me as self-indulgent and annoyingly self-satisfactory. The problem is the use of proxies for success as improper substitutes for the real thing. For example, high grades and Law Review participation are certainly impressive academic achievements. But the real achievements in law occur outside the classroom. They involve getting the innocent acquitted and the guilty convicted, or establishing the most economically efficient legal doctrine to enhance everyone's standard of living. Turow and his peers were thrilled to be admitted to Harvard because it is Harvard and it is exclusive. They desired high grades and invitation to Law Review because these were distinctions between themselves and others. They were BETTER than those who were not admitted to Harvard, who did not have high grades, and who were not on the Law Review. The motivating factor, by all appearances, is mere egotism, not a desire to do justice. There's no other way to explain the crippling fear of poor grades or mediocrity, as opposed to slight disappointment.

After all, there are no grand moral truths to defend in tax, secured transactions, or civil procedure. No flesh and blood human beings or clients are affected by a student's exam or Law Review submission. Instead, success in such courses goes to those most able to survive a war of attrition, who continue to read and plug away at the concepts when wiser souls would have long recognized the absurdity of the endeavor. Grade distributions from the first year classes of property, contracts, torts, civil procedure, and criminal law are useful to firms in sorting out the more talented from the less so in the narrow skill of writing an exam. It is useful in selecting Law Review members and clerkships, which are just extensions of the game, more hurdles to jump through, more feathers to scoop up in backbreaking fashion, more ends in themselves. These are the heights to which many aspire. This is the source of much misery and misdirected energy. This is so unnecessary.

In the end, the desire to be recognized, to stand out, to feel pleased with oneself and have one's efforts rewarded is completely understandable. Turow captures this idea perfectly. It's tragic that such feelings of security and success and personal worth stem from mastery of the Uniform Commercial Code. But perhaps this is no worse than the same feelings stemming from mastery of Donkey Kong (see the documentary King of Kong), the triple Salchow, or the four-seam fastball.

The accurate:
1. Law school is competitive. To be accepted into a top law school, one must have stellar academic credentials, which are basically defined by an LSAT score and undergraduate GPA. Success in both areas requires a combination of intelligence and diligence. Thus, even prior to the first day of class, a selection bias operates to create a group of competitive assholes. More than one of these people will have read hornbooks over the summer in preparation for the upcoming semester. All will have enjoyed academic success for the majority of their lives. And almost all will, to a greater or lesser degree, define their self worth through academic achievement. When grades are distributed on a strict curve, as they are in many law schools, there will necessarily be only a limited number of people at the top. This requires most of the class, formerly sure of themselves and proud of their abilities, to literally reevaluate their lives and their worth as they find themselves at the bottom or middle of the class for the first time.

2. The secret desire to do well and fear of failure when surrounded by such talented and motivated individuals is very real. People discover what they are made of in law school, and it can be scary. Turow captures this sentiment beautifully when describing a conversation he had with his peers about the Law Review. Some stated flatly they wanted to make it because of the honor. Turow initially said he did not want it and wouldn't participate in the 40-50 hours per week required to complete cite checking--the arduous and thankless task of verifying the accuracy of sources supporting propositions in published academic pieces. But when pressed, he admitted that he actually did want it and says, "I felt I'd done something precarious, something quite dangerous, the minute the words were out of my mouth." The danger was in allowing himself to acknowledge that he cared about something, that he had set a goal, even if subconsciously, that he probably would not be able to fulfill, and failing to fulfill that goal would be emotionally painful.

3. Economics is inextricably linked to the law. Legal doctrines, decisions, and arguments frequently draw on concepts from economics. Students who are well-versed in economics likely have an advantage in law school. Civil procedure's rules, cost/benefit analysis in administrative law and elsewhere, efficient breaches in contracts, the concept of negligence in torts, the Coase theorem in property, and many other areas of economics reveal themselves throughout nearly every law school course.

4. Grading in law school is imperfect. Most courses have just one final exam at the end of the term. Thus, a single exam between 3 and 8 hours determines one's grade for the course. There is insufficient time to deeply wrangle with the issues, and the process is more like regurgitation than analysis. Many believe the single exam system exists to minimize the amount of effort required by professors to determine grades. Others complain that their true ability, whatever that means, is not reflected in so short a time. Still others swear that preparation has no relation to grades. Despite these drawbacks, it's not at all clear there is a better alternative. As is frequently the case in life, it is easy to point out a problem and much more difficult to find a solution. However imperfect the single exam evaluation is, and setting aside that there is a great deal of variation between the abilities of students with similar grades, grades do serve a useful function by distinguishing. Effort and knowledge are rewarded, and there is a large difference between an A+ exam and a mediocre one.

5. Grades are hugely important. With 40,000 or more attorneys graduated every year in the United States, law firms, judges, and government agencies simply must use some method to whittle down applicants for associate positions. Grades are an easy way to do just that. Moreover, the grades do reveal something, whether it's effort, intelligence, or even a bit of luck.

6. The varying teaching styles described by Turow are spot on. The Socratic method, whereby professors "cold call" students or ask questions and delve into the responses to reveal underlying concepts and encourage critical thinking, is a staple of the first year legal curriculum. Some professors are better at it than others. Some, like Turow's Torts professor, will literally never make an affirmative statement, preferring instead to leave questions open. Others may use classes as their own ego-stroking sessions, never failing to achieve what seems like ersatz sexual gratification at the thought that they know more than their students. Occasionally, however, students are blessed with that rare professor who is both talented and comfortable in his own skin. He asks difficult and important questions to provoke new thoughts or refine arguments. He answers questions when needed and builds on established ground, climbing slowly to exciting new heights and intellectual playgrounds, inviting students to join him in the sandbox above.

7. The first year is exhausting. Reading cases and studying the law is like learning a second language, as Turow mentions. The concepts themselves are rarely difficult. Instead, the difficulty lies in the volume of material to be sifted and learning how to extract the pertinent from the extraneous. The difficulty lies in overcoming jargon and the barriers erected by annoying, petty people who intentionally obscure their ideas in unnecessarily complex language or sentence structure in order to give the illusion of brilliance. The worst offenders? Professors and judges, the very people from whom new students are forced to learn. Reading and understanding small numbers of pages requires large numbers of hours in the beginning because of the novelty of the endeavor. It is not an exaggeration that most of one's waking life is devoted to the study of the law during that first semester, but this is largely due to his own inefficiency. Not yet knowing what is important, dozens of hours are wasted on material that won't be covered on the final exam.

8. Law school is not about education. It is about playing a game. Turow refreshingly acknowledges that he chose his elective in the Spring based on his estimated time required for daily preparation and difficulty of the material. For most students, concerns like interesting material or actually learning something useful are a distant second to finding the path of least resistance. Students don't take the renowned prosecutor or scholar if he is a notoriously difficult grader; they'd much rather the unknown teacher who will go easier on them.

The absurd:
1. The insecurity masked as arrogance described by Turow is either unbearable or pitifully comedic depending on one's disposition. Those with truly brilliant minds, nimble, open to subtle reasoning and argumentation, have no need to assert it to others. People who are in constant competition or have an insatiable need to assert their superiority would not seem like fun chaps with whom to spend an evening, no matter how accomplished they may be. Their haughty self-righteousness--the author's own faults in this area seeped through more than once--bothered the hell out of me. Here's an example, which generates feelings of embarrassment for me on behalf of the author and the students who thought this was a story worth repeating: In regard to Perini, a Contracts professor, a student advisor, Peter, said, "He's a great teacher...but not an easy one. When I was a 1L, the first person he called on was a national champion debater and Perini had him on his back in forty seconds." God. The overwhelming nerdiness of that sentence and the underlying sentiment makes me want to harm myself. A professor having more knowledge of a subject than a student on his first day of class is no more awe-inspiring than Michael Jordan dunking on a toddler.

2. Karen Sondergard, one of the author's section mates, cried at least daily, upping that count to 4 or 5 times a day during exam period. At some point, it's like, dude, get your shit together.

3. The desire for extended adolescence and avoiding responsibility belies many arguments about the nobility of law school. In discussing why he went to law school, a man in Turow's study group named Terry said, "I just tell myself, 'Hey, you didn't wanna be a grown-up. You're not ready yet. You wanna stay lose.'" This seems to be the thinking of an alarmingly high number of law students.

4. Complaints about professors requiring students to justify their positions during cold calls are childish and surprisingly anti-intellectual coming from Harvard Law students. Turow says that several classmates fumed because they were "forced to substitute dry reason for emotion," and weren't allowed to make arguments based on their "feelings" or compassion. Just a moment's thought reveals the absurdity of succumbing to feelings. Suppose Gina, one of Turow's section mates, strongly feels that capital punishment is wrong. I could merely respond that I equally strongly feel that capital punishment is a moral imperative for certain crimes. How then do we decide between the positions? Feelings are immeasurable, unquantifiable, and subjective. As Turow allows, "Many of the people with these complaints were straight out of college" and came of age in the 60s. If you want to bathe in emotion, that's fine, but don't conflate what you're doing with reason or intelligence, which are distinct concepts that law school is right to emphasize.

5. Some students literally audibly hissed at comments they didn't like during class. Ordinarily, according to Turow, "hissing had been reserved for fellow students, usually when the speaker's remarks were politically conservative. (Most of the hissers seemed to be leftwing.)" These brilliant minds, nimble, open to subtle reasoning and argumentation hissed at those with whom they disagreed in an attempt, I guess, to publicly shame dissenters into groupthink. I was astonished to read that this activity, so juvenile that I would be embarrassed to engage in it while attending grade school, was a rather routine practice at HLS.

6. Complaints against the Socratic Method are overblown and over-hyped to the point of being tired. There were too many anecdotes that Professor J did X, Y, and Z to unprepared student A. Of course, X, Y, and Z never actually happen to any known student, it was always a couple of years prior. Preparing for class and giving a good faith effort are perfect defenses to any dramatic attacks from a professor wielding the Socratic Method as the humiliation weapon of choice. Nonetheless, some of these brilliant minds, nimble, open to subtle reasoning and argumentation complained that it was "unfair and intimidating." Intimidating? Maybe. Unfair? Not at all. On exactly what grounds should it be considered unfair? Turow never tells you.

7. The rumors circulated about individuals are likewise absurd. Professor Morris, Turow's Civ Pro professor and recent HLS graduate at the top of his class, was verbally fellated by students given to hero worship. Turow writes, "About Morris, our talk was especially reverential, because he had so recently been through the law school himself and had left such an astonishing record. The most amazing tale of his prowess was a story, perhaps apocryphal, that in a single four-hour exam period he had written not only the test in the course, but also a term paper which he'd forgotten to do in the crush of Law Review duties. On both, he'd received the highest grade in the class." "Perhaps" it was apocryphal, Turow says. And right after that exam, Morris challenged Bill Brasky to a bare-knuckle boxing bout--and won; word is that he "had him on his back in forty seconds."

8. The amount of self-induced fear and pressure is way beyond absurd when you step back and realize that all law school requires is writing of exams and papers. That's it. No big deal. No wars, no torturing, no cancer or other illness to battle, no physical assaults, no deaths. Just academic work. No one cares nearly as much about it as the individual students.

9. If "One L" makes the people in law school sound superhuman, here's a nice dose of reality written in the Vanderbilt Law Review (gasp, Vanderbilt isn't even T14, but the author went to HLS so maybe it's acceptable?):