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Aftersleep Books
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One L The Turbulent True Story of a First Year aThe following report compares books using the SERCount Rating (base on the result count from the search engine). |
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Aftersleep Books - 2005-06-20 07:00:00 | © Copyright 2004 - www.aftersleep.com () | sitemap | top |
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.