Reddit reviews Law School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience

As a second-year law student, and a guy who threw his heart and soul into the law school application/admission process, I want to offer a few pointers here, maybe lead one person down the right path.

1. Too many people go to law school for the wrong reasons: their parents pushed them into it, they don't have any other direction in their life, or they just want to make money. If you just want to make money, that's fine, but you really, really need to understand #2:
   
   
2. There is a bimodal salary distribution in entry-level legal jobs. This means, when you graduate, you will either: A) Make six figures working 80 hours a week, minimum, at a top-tier law firm, B) Make $50,000, if you're lucky, doing contract jobs, or if you're really lucky, working government/non-profit, or C) Be unemployed. Law schools game the employment figures to all show 99% employment, when those actually gainfully-employed, able to pay off their crushing student loans on a reasonable time frame, are more like 10%, at a mid-level school, 25-50% at the best.
   
   
3. There are 200 law schools in America. Very seriously, if you really want a job, you have two options: Go to the best school in the region (i.e., to work in Kentucky, you can only go to the University of Kentucky, maybe Vanderbilt. People from Louisville and NKU struggle for employment). Or, you can go to one of the top law schools in the nation, the very few where your degree might actually have some national reach. Law schools are ranked annually by U.S. News and World Report, and, broken system or not, the best firms in the world hire almost exclusively from the "top 14" schools.
   
   Some highly suggested reading before you start thinking about law school:
   
   

• Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! - A NYT article from this summer that kind of brought the law school scam (spinning employment statistics, including median salaries, and jacking up tuitions) to the forefront. There was a lot of outcry from the legal profession and legal academia at its publication.
  
  
• Above The Law - A tabloid blog for the legal profession. Sometimes fun reading, they take a very cynical tack on law school and legal prospects in general.
  
  
• The Top-Law-Schools.com forums - If you really want to go to law school, this is the place to spend all your time. These are a bunch of people really dedicated to getting into, and succeeding at, the top law schools in the country. Your GPA and LSAT are everything here, so study HARD, and retake if you have to.
  
  
• Law School Confidential, by Robert Miller - This is a great guide for success once you're in law school, and I would recommend it for every incoming 1L.
  
  
• 1L, by Scott Turow - This is a really fascinating memoir of a famous author/lawyer's first year at Harvard Law, and it holds true for the 1L experience at almost any law school. The 1L year is very standardized across the country: same classes, same case method, same Socratic method.
  
  
• Planet Law School II, by Atticus Falcon - This one I recommend with a big caveat: the author is a very jaded, cynical person who hides behind the wall of a pseudonym and rails against law schools and the legal profession. It's also a pretty long book. But if you have the extra time/money, it's worth thumbing through, albeit taking what's in there with a grain of salt. It pretty much angrily tears apart the American law school institution.
  
  
• How to Get Into the Top Law Schools, by Richard Montauk - This book is gold for the law school admissions process. The TLS forums (above) will recommend this highly. If you're dead-set on going to law school, read it. And best of luck at Yale!
  
  
• The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, by Anna Ivey - This is another one that I recommend for law school applications, along with the Montauk book. It's shorter, and Ivey comes off as a know-it-all snob, but the information is solid.
  
  I'm not trying to out-and-out discourage you from going to law school. If you actually do research, then find out it's what you really want, go for it. Crush the LSAT out of the park and go somewhere that will guarantee you a job. Do not go to a fourth-tier law school (John Marshall, Florida Coastal, Cooley, etc.) just because they sent you a bunch of marketing materials in the mail with an offer for a free scholarship. These places are the University of Phoenix of law schools. Any law school that has to advertise by mail really isn't worth the price of the (worthless) degree.
  
  
  

I'd read this book or something similar (the guy who mentioned the 1L guide at top-law-schools may have the same info).

Hell if you want I can send you my copy of that book if you want.

It gives you insight into what to expect each year and fills you in on some basic stuff that you are just supposed to intuit once you get there.

I remember reading this book a decade ago and it pretty much covered what law school and the early years of practice were like --particularly if you're aiming at big law. It's a little on the alarmist side, but I don't think that's a bad thing for people considering the profession.

Read Law School Confidential. It will give you a look at the good, bad, and ugly of law school and the first few years of practice.

Also, read this blog post by The Criminal Lawyer - "Is Law School Right for You?". While it was posted on a blog predominately about criminal law, it is still true for any specialization that you may be thinking about pursuing.

I just finished law school. Try getting a book. I'm in California, so I don't know how Iceland's law school differs. I liked law school confidential: http://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Confidential-Complete-Experience/dp/031224309X

Also, take as many practice tests as you can. When I took the bar, I took dozens of practice tests for each subject. I wish I had done more when in school.

Making friends, and other advice on here is also very true.