César Chávez says:

Before going to law school you must read this book. This book really has the power to alter the course of your life.
Rating: 5 / 5

Terry6008 says:

Two years ago I attended law school for a short period before quitting, and now I am interested in going back, but I wanted to evaluate my reasons for going back to make sure I was going back for the right reasons. This book was very helpful in doing just that. Also, as many reviewers have said, I wish I would have read this book before attempting law school the first time around because I think I could have avoided the pit falls that originally led me to quit. Reading this book was a big help and I would suggest it to anyone thinking about law school.
Rating: 5 / 5

CrunchyCookie says:

Exhaustion made me quit this book halfway, but that’s more than enough reading to discover that its authors have embarrassingly little to say about the legal profession beyond the obvious. The first three chapters can be summed up in a sentence: don’t go to law school for the wrong reasons, because it’s expensive. That’s a fine notion, but rather than explore the issue in any meaningful way, they just dish out banal pop culture references, TV & movie quotes, generic anecdotes that go nowhere, and a whole lot of repetition. Making matters worse, they smack down a big glossary of psychobabble terminology early on (i.e. “confirmation bias”, “decision paralysis”, “information cascade”), then refer to the terms constantly in a misguided attempt to sound intelligent and scientific.

Check out this passage from page 9:

“Deborah was obsessed with getting a graduate degree by 30, an arbitrarily chosen age that took on far too much significance in her decision-making. This common trap is called ANCHORING — attaching great importance to a fact or figure that may have little or no bearing on our judgments or decisions.

When she decided to stay in law school, Deborah was influenced by her fear that she might later regret her decision to leave. Again, this is another powerful force called REGRET AVERSION, which means that people tend to shy away from taking an action because they fear they’ll regret making their decision later. Like a lot of CHOICE CHALLENGES, the practice of making decisions based on fear of regret sounds obvious when you hear it explained, but the extent to which this tendency affects your decisions is greater than most people think.

Deborah was also overwhelmed by the thought of how to decide what to do if she left law school. This reflects a common CHOICE CHALLENGE called DECISION PARALYSIS — a reference to the difficulty people encounter when having to select from many options. For Deborah, ruling out law ruled in everything else, and the thought of choosing among all those professional paths was too daunting.”

Isn’t it scary how so many words can contain so little information?

Second example (page 65):

“If you don’t like using the skills that most lawyers use, you probably won’t enjoy being a lawyer. If you dislike thinking about legal subjects and reading legal documents, it doesn’t bode well for your happiness in law. It’s better to find out before starting school whether you would enjoy working in a legal environment, and whether legal work is in line with your priorities. If you don’t consider these questions now, you may wind up confronting them later when the stakes are higher — after you’ve invested three years and a ton of money on a JD.”

There’s also a section headlined “What Psychological Experience Can I Expect From Law School?”, whose given answers are the following (and I quote):

1. Read about it

2. Talk to law students and law school counselors about common stressors

3. Try it out

Seriously.

In sum, this is a cheaply conceived, badly written, and sloppily edited hybrid between a third-rate career book and a fourth-rate psychology book from two morons who show no indication of having ever been lawyers.
Rating: 2 / 5