The Jd Jungle Law School Survival Guide

by Editors Jd Jungle, The Editors of JD Jungle

There's an old saying about law school: The first year, they scare you to death; the second year, they work you to death; the third year, they bore you to death. Helping to alleviate this famed fright, sweat, and boredom, The JD Jungle Law School Survival Guide expertly shows current and prospective students how to navigate all three years of law-school torture. Comprehensive, practical, and witty, it includes advice from students in the trenches, successful graduates, sage professors, and working professionals, including:How to identify and get accepted at the law school of your choicePlaces to look for and get financial aidEffective note-taking, study, and exam-day strategiesTips for managing law-school stressHow to pass the bar exam the first timeHow to land a law internship-and then the job of your dreamsFounded by parent company Jungle Interactive Media in 2000, JD Jungle is one of the hottest new magazines on the market. With a circulation of 80,000 subscribers, it can be found on newsstands everywhere. Visit www.JdJungle.com.

Genres: Law

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a book one picks up on a whim. Rather, it is one that you read through in just a couple of days to get a good sense of what law school demands – not to mention what one is up against if you’re planning on take the plunge, like me, into the crazy, often money-drenched field of law and the boot-camp known as first year law school. (I guess the profession knows that it needs to weed the weakest out, what with the drop-out rate many programs experience by the end of the first year. Survival of the fittest and most tenacious, perhaps?)

The LSSG packs a mighty wallop as it covers the basic ins and outs of the LSAT, admissions, funding law school, and what to focus on each of the three years that one will devote to studying law. Here’s how they break it down.

Year One: Work, work, work.
Year two: Start to specialize.
Year three: Start looking and interviewing for jobs.

The editors also recommend scoring a coveted job as a law clerk during the summer between Years One and Two, and submitting work to your school’s law review publication beginning in year two. They also give a cheat-sheet about how to brief a case (which will consume a lot of time in year one), studying for the bar exam, as well as a detailed and varied lists of books that one can read before law school even begins so that you’re as much ahead of the game before the madness of those three years begins (which includes several books that slam law schools for being mere factories to produce corporate defendants and yes-men).

I also found amusing the advice for interviewing with law firms with its hilarious non-examples of folks that blew it by acting crazy – like the dope that hit on the head of the firm’s wife. Knowingly, I might add. (Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.) If this process is ever nerve-wracking, it’s good to know there have been folks who have acted like fools right before being handed their JD.