Law School: A Survivor's Guide.

• Author: Bair, Benjamin C.

It is likely that anyone reading this book review(1) either has been to law school or knows someone who has been to law school; if so, I am sorry. Law school has an uncanny way of changing people, and that change is not always for the better.(2) Help has arrived, however. Professor James D. Gordon III(3) has written an excellent satire of law school and the legal profession. His book, Law School: A Survivor's Guide, begins with that first paralyzing question, "Should You Go To Law School?" (p. 1), passes through "Taking the LSAT" (p. 5), "Applying to Law School" (p. 9), "The First Year" (p. 16), "The Second and Third Years" (p. 54), "The Bar Exam" (p. 82), and "The First Year of Law Practice" (p. 85), and ends with a few miscellaneous chapters on such important legal topics as "Recreation for Young Professionals" (p. 104) and "Where Our Laws Come From" (p. 116).

The nature of Gordon's book suggests that other survivors' guides to the areas he leaves unexplored might prove useful to law students and legal professionals. For example, this book notice will present a survivor's guide for book reviewers. As it takes its inspiration from Gordon, it adopts his style -- and often his words. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "'For those that like this kind of book [review guide], this is the kind of book [review guide] they will like'" (p. ix).

1. WHAT IS A BOOK REVIEW?

   The book review is a homely creature. Existing somewhere between a law review article and an opinion letter to the New York Times, a good book review should engage both the "critical" reader and the more "general" reader.(4) The book review author typically describes the substance of a book and then engages in a more general discussion about the issues raised within it. This discussion can -- and often does -- range from criticism to the suggestion of new ideas to just plain rambling. Book reviews tend, mercifully, to be much shorter and to have fewer footnotes than articles.(5) They consistently prove more interesting than articles as well, unless your idea of a good time includes mastering the intricacies of sixteenth-century canine law.

   As with all legal writers, a book review author should avoid the typical writing pitfalls. First, he should write plainly and concisely. Gordon observes that "[l]awyers write as if they were paid by the word, or maybe even as if they were born in a parallel universe" (p. 38). He also points out how lawyers have created redundant phrases like "cease and desist" and "idiot and professor" (p. 41). Second, a book review author should avoid cliches, mixed metaphors, and "lawyerisms." Lawyerisms include the terms "aforementioned" and "hereinafter" as...