Product Description
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5 Comments
I started considering a career in law a year ago and spoke with a range of people including friends pursuing their JD, family lawyer friends, and mentors at work. I also attended a few info sessions and read books similar to this one, but they failed to clearly describe the path from applications to graduation and beyond with the right amount of detail.
This is a great book that’s straight forward and well written. The author offers practical advice on relevant issues/concerns whether you’re an undergrad or have a few years of experience like myself. While One L is an entertaining read, it fails to touch on experiences after graduation-this is where this book makes its name.
A random family friend gave me a copy of the book over the holiday. I suggest that anyone exploring a law school and a career in law reads Cannon’s advice. Check out the sections on “the big lie,” life at large firms and options within the government.
Though the author seems narcissistic at times, his advice is invaluable. He honestly explains what a legal career encompasses. Further, he goes on to discuss the choice between law and business.
As a graduate of the same law school Cannon attended, I’m embarrassed for our alma mater. This book is the weakest of its genre, and I’ve read a bunch (out of sheer curiosity). What it offers, primarily, is endless praise of Cannon’s own achievements and credentials, which aren’t nearly as stellar as he thinks, and utterly gratuitous insults to other law schools. The advice it carries will do little harm, but it’s superficial in the extreme, offering such trite conclusions as, “Going to law school entails a significant investment of time and money.”
And on top of all this, it’s poorly written. Cannon’s overuse of exclamation points brings to mind the efforts of novice writers to add impact to their sentences not by choosing appropriate, forceful words, but by altering the punctuation.
This book’s title, calling itself the “ultimate” guide to what “every young lawyer MUST know,” constitutes almost actionable fraud.
Better options are “Making Partner,” by Sapp, “Jagged Rocks of Wisdom,” by Lund, “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law,” by Herrmann, and probably anything else.
This book contained a lot of information that I wish I had known before I invested in law school. But, as a guide for those of us who already have the degree, it’s pretty worthless. I gave it 4 stars because I recommend it to everyone who tells me that they plan to attend law school.
Cannon does a thorough job describing the various ways to get into and manners to climb up the corporate law firm ladder, such as what job to get after graduating (clerking for a judge or deciding between different types of law firms) and what to do during your years at law school and the summers in between. He uses anecdotal descriptions to describe how people have managed to do so in addition to describing why and when people want to move out of corporate firm life to investment banking or other business related careers (ex. working at the SEC) in law.
Unfortunately, if you were like me and are looking for an overview of other arenas in which one can practice law, like public interest law or any public sector law other than the SEC, this book may not be for you. Cannon does a good job at letting readers know the positives and negatives of life at large firms, and the book has given me more reason to not want to pursue a career in a large corporate firm. But Cannon says little about anything else.
The book could also have been aided by a few more rounds of edits as multiple sections and anecdotes with the same point are repeated many times. The book should have had these almost identically worded sections consolidated.
All in all, the book is useful for anyone who wants to get into a top large firm in a big city or for anyone who is trying to decide between a law degree, MBA, or both. For others, like me, the title of the book may seem a bit disingenuous – this is no ultimate guide to your legal career but someone else’s.