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It is profoundly ironic and just-about-right that most people who will study law and become lawyers read “One L�� BEFORE their first year of law school. Before they know anything about what the book references. Before they can relate. Before all the nuances and insights have any real meaning. This book is not at all a guide, and so it is of very limited utility when it is read in advance instead of in reflection. But law students simply cannot help themselves. In anticipating and trying to prepare for the tumultuous first year, most readers are already, subconsciously or not, engaging in a kind of slow-motion oneupmanship. In some sense, the book describes and critiques the natural inclinations displayed by the very people most often reading it.

I (solely by coincidence) did not read “One L�� until I had completely finished my 1L year. I started the book one hour after I hit send on the final assignment for NLaw’s Write-On. Immediately, I felt like I was being given the hug I had not known I needed. Turow writes with such honesty and frankness, and only a very small and tasteful dose of rose-tinted-glasses syndrome, that one is sometimes left wondering why he didn’t abandon the law for a career as a psychologist.

I highly recommend that absolutely no one reads One L before starting law school; it would seem overwrought, melodramatic, and serious in ways that are crude and self-important. I also highly recommend that absolutely everyone reads One L after their first year. In doing so, I realized that the neuroses and paranoia, the complex emotional cocktail of competitiveness, pride, envy, forced collaboration, genuine companionship, shame, and self-effacing identity crisis that Turow puts under the microscope are common to first year students at American law schools and have not evolved substantially since the mid 1970s (by Turow’s estimation, since the late 1880s). The sense of connection I feel now, after peering into Turow’s mind and heart, flows from his sheer vulnerability, an aspect of humans that is sometimes hard to come by at law school, but, when found, is always the diamond in the rough that makes the whole experience bearable.