Rating: 
Summary: Outdated and melodramatic
Review: As fiction, Turow's book is a decent read. As a portrait of Harvard Law School today, it's a dud. I haven't experienced a moment of the backstabbing competition Turow claims to have found everywhere 30 years ago. I have never heard anyone discussing his or her grades. The class is not ranked. Study aids are freely shared. Turow was simply going to a different law school than the one that exists now.Bear in mind that Turow arrived at HLS with a contract to write this book. Drama, conflict, and agony are necessary ingredients of any good expose, and he provides them in abundance. My happy One-L year would have made the world's most boring book. Read it for your own entertainment. It isn't bad literature. But don't let it scare you away from law school, or from Harvard.
Rating: 
Summary: Good read; mandatory for future law students
Review: I read "One L" prior to going to Gonzaga Law School in part to brace myself for what was going to come. Turow does get one thing right for sure in his book---the crushing work load that every law student has to take on. There is pressure, that is for sure but I found it to be solely due to the huge amount of material one had to master in what seemed to be a very short period of time. And he also got the stress of law school final exams right. Nothing in undergraduate school will prepare a student for the single exam winner-take-all format that most law classes still follow to this day. What I didn't find accurate from his book is the cutthroat competition amongst law students. That might've been what it was in the early 1970s when he was at Harvard. It certainly wasn't what I experienced. I cannot recall a single occasion where my classmates sat around talking about grades, speculating about who would make Law Review, or battling in study groups like Turow describes. Maybe Gonzaga was just a more humane place than Harvard. Still, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what the law school experience is like (or was like). And if you're thinking of going to law school, be prepared for the biggest academic challenge of your life, wherever you go.
Rating:
Summary: Great drama - albeit outdated for current law school.
Review: I found the book to be interesting, if not a bit melodramatic, highlighting what "old school" was like at Harvard some 20+ years ago. The teaching methods vary between schools, and competition and teaching theories have definitely changed over the years. This book provides great shock value, but should not be used to scare a person away from attending law school.
Rating: 
Summary: From one who knows
Review: I've read this book twice...once a few years before I thought of going to law school, and then again toward the end of my first year at a top tier school. I would have given it four stars the first time. Now that I've been there, it's gets all five. While I would agree that today's law schools are not as harsh as the picture Turow paints of HLS in the 70s, I can't say that things are all that different - at least not in the ways that matter. The emotions that Turow describes - from his early feelings of inadequacy to his later feelings of redemption - are real and true. I felt somehow vindicated reading this late in my first year of law school, like I wasn't all that looney for thinking the thoughts I did or feeling the way I felt (OK, that's still debatable). At any rate, this book touched me, and that's what I think books should do. If you are just a casual observer of the law and are interested in what it's like to go to law school, pick this up and satisfy your curiosity. If you are in law school yourself, give this a read when you can no longer stomach Civ Pro and feel the need to do something good for your soul.
Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful and interesting account
Review: Intense is the only word to describe Turow's taut, melodramatic account of 1st-year student life at Harvard Law School. Turow's description of the emotional roller-coaster of that first year--ranging from excitement and fascination to shear panic and deep depression, will keep you on the edge of your seat. I understand that things have changed a lot at Harvard, as well as other law schools, since when it was written 25 years ago (which is good), but if you want to find out what it was like before the winds of a more humane milieu blew through it's vaunted corridors, there is no better account than Turow's book. I never attended law school, but I can certainly sympathize with Turow's position as a result of my own experiences. One of the schools I attended in the late 70's, about the time Turow was at HLS, had the highest suicide rate of any school in the state (and it was a big state with lots of colleges), and there were enough depressed and suicidal students running around so that people were becoming alarmed, and eventually the school had to try to do something about it. Well, they did try, by providing psychological counseling for distraught students, and the professors even seemed to be more aware of possible problems, so hopefully it did some good. Anyway, looked at from a cultural perspective, maybe such overblown, hyperkinetic, and extreme rites of passage as law school are just society's way of making sure only the toughest (as opposed to the smartest) students, survive? Or maybe it's just society's way of getting "even" with budding lawyers for what they're going to do when they get out? Well, obviously I'm being somewhat facetious here, but sometimes I ponder why modern societies set these things up this way. One other interesting thing Turow did is that the recent edition includes an afterward in which he discusses his experiences working for 10 years in the district attorneys office in Chicago, where he prosecuted cases of corruption brought against lawyers and judges. All in all, Turow's book makes for a suspenseful and interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Essential read for pre-laws; still a good read for others.
Review: This is a great book. If you are thinking about Law School, you HAVE to read it. Understand, though, that the Law School experience--and the HLS experience, in specific--has changed a lot since the time this book was written. Still, nothing can give you a better idea of what law school will be like than this book. Today, hundreds of law students keep blogs of their experience--this phenomenon was clearly inspired by this book, which is written like (and, in fact adapted from) Turow's journal. Even if you're not Law School bound, this is an exciting, engaging book that tells a great story. Turow is, of course, a successful author and an established writer. This book stands on its own as a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, fun to read
Review: I loved this book! Turow is gifted in his ability to describe the intensity of the first year. Having been through Medical School and preparing for Law School, I found this book helpful in that Turow's description of the emotional aspects of the first year of Law School are similar to what I experienced in Medical School. The fear, the competition, the realization that you are surrounded by people who have always excelled, and chances are good you're going to be average for the first time in your life. I assume that things have changed greatly at HLS since Turow's day, but I can say I'm glad to have chosen a smaller, more practical, less pretentious school!
Rating:
Summary: A good recount of the first year
Review: I thought this book was an interesting portrayal of an Ivy League law school - I read it the summer before I began law school at a Jesuit law school on the West Coast. Many of the 1L experiences will be the same no matter where one attends - the stress from competition, for example - I liked to characterize it as "the thrill of victory" (to get a cherished A) or the "agony of defeat" (to make an idiot out of yourself in class, which, I am sorry to say, I did on more than one occasion!) My advice to prospective (and current) law students would be to buy the book, and read it with a grain of salt. I believe that each person has the ability to create their own destiny, and there's a hell of a lot more to learning the law, and succeeding in your chosen profession, than being in the top 5% and on law review - make friends, have fun, and most of all, use your knowledge to help more less fortunate than you, no matter if you went to Harvard or number #176 on U.S. News's list of 177 law schools. That's the key to success as an attorney, and in life, for that matter. Just my $.02!
Rating:
Summary: IT HAS A SPOOKY ATTRACTION
Review: I'm a Brit and I'm not a lawyer, I left University 22 years ago. I have kids and a dog (and a wife). I have never been to the USA and know virtually nothing about Harvard. So why have i read this book FIVE TIMES !!? It must be VOODOO because the whole thing about struggling through law school inspired me. Not only have I read it 5 times outright, I find myself even now dipping into it to catch a quick fix. It is a truly tremendous book, full of humanity, intellectual discussion and it evinces a real love of the law. It is probably one of, if not thee, best book old ST has written.
Rating: 
Summary: The book probably does not represent the typical HLS Student
Review: I'm not sure what to make of Turow's book. Here is a guy who goes to Harvard Law School, an institution which has existed in its present form for well over 200 years. As a first year law student, he has the nerve to have all these criticisms of the institution -- that it's hostile, that the law is not warm and fuzzy, that there are clear boundaries in the law, which seem to indicate that he has choosen the wrong field. He seemed to be quite selfish in that he wanted the school to change many of its most cheerished methods of teaching to satisfy one alienated, empty-headed student. All readers assume that one's first year at Harvard Law School is challenging. Ironically, it does seem as though Harvard may have listened to Mr. Turow's complaints since I have not heard of the difficulty of the institution from other students/graduates. It is possible that they have dumbed-down the curriculum to satisfy those who would prefer to complain than learn. At the same time, this book certainly opens our perspective in how the law school class is set up, including the Socratic method, to which I was already quite familiar with. I would urge readers not to think that Mr. Turow's experience is at all shared by most at Harvard -- or any other institution. Remember that Mr. Turow just happened to want to write about his experience, but many others who choose not to write probably had drastically different experiences. Maybe they choose to learn and excel rather than to criticize an institution ten times their age. Mr. Turow's analysis of the other students also appears rather superficial and shallow. The students are essentially grouped into the achievers, the complainers (who think of themselves as "intellectuals," but who, in reality, are no more intellectual than a kindergardener with a crayon), and the professors who "harass" the students. What about the exact types of questions one faces in law school. How are the questions different from undergraduate life? Is law school merely a tarriff to prevent competition in the legal professsion? Also, as with most people who advocate change, Mr. Turow is remarkably short on specifics on how he would change the law school experience. The lack of specifics is common for those who gripe about the present but are unable to explain an alternative system to which they aspire. This is certainly an interesting book, but I would hesitate to think that it is the Bible of the Law School experience. It is merely one story about one institution in a particular year.
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