It had recently come to my attention that I was not really prepared to start law school. I was moving across the country to attend a school that had agreed with me about how great of a match we would be, and I was starting to sift my way through the pile of “going to law school” books that had been recommended to me by family, friends, and attorneys I knew. After the third or fourth book that read like a self help book, I was getting frustrated with the same advice – study a lot, don’t get too stressed, listen to your elders, don’t spend too much money, here is how to brief a case, etc. These are all good things to know, but I wasn’t getting very much about how law school worked and why it made sense to do things like briefing cases. I was more interested in the philosophy behind law school than a map of how to do well and the symptoms of having started law school. In short, I lacked the “why?” of it all.
In comes Karl Llewellyn and the book that will hopefully have saved me from floundering for the first month of school. The Bramble Bush is a fantastic explanation of what to expect from law school. It is a timeless explanation of the case method that focuses not only on how to deal with cases given to you to analyse, but also on why cases make sense as a topic of study. It was written right as the case method was being adopted more widely among influential scholars in the 1930s, and almost reads as a defense of the practice of teaching with in such a way. These were actual lectures given by Mr. Llewellyn, and they read as such. Some of the language is a little archaic, but it is interspersed with very clever humor.
Do yourself a favor and read it!
Good luck to all of the new 1Ls! We’re gonna need it!
Special thanks to Tom Theado for pointing me in the right direction.
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