Summer Reading: Bracing Yourself for the First Year of Law School

ZiefBrief has noticed that lots of folks looking for advice on getting ready to start law school are wandering from Google into our post on finding inspiration for law review and paper topics.

So, we thought, why not some words on how to spend the summer before law school?

Frankly, we don't think that there's much you can do over the summer to give yourself any concrete advantage or leg up for the first year. The beginning of the first semester, and any orientation period are when you’ll really learn how to tackle law school. Better you should spend the summer doing something fun, so that you show up in the fall rested and refreshed. Here we agree with the U. Conn. School of Law's Summer Reading list, which advises:

Two of the most important things you can do this summer, aside from dealing with real-world obligations such as making money, child care and the like, do not involve reading at all. They include: (1) breathing in; and (2) breathing out! Seriously, you will be much better prepared for the rigors of law school if you have had a balanced, enjoyable and relaxing summer than if you have not.

That said, if you're curious about law (and if you're not, rethink that decision to matriculate now, before you plunk down a year's tuition!) and about what your next 3 or 4 years will be like, you'll find some good suggestions — for fiction, non-fiction, and law-school-survival texts — at these sites.

• Appalachian School of Law's Suggested Summer Reading
• Pace Law Library's Summer Reading section of their Guide for First-Year Law Students
• Univ. of Miami School of Law's Recommended Summer Reading List
  
• Univ. of Wyoming College of Law Admissions Office's List of Readings for Entering Law Students

Or, if you just want to spend a little time with literature before devoting the next 9 months to reading judicial opinions (leavened with the occasional rule, statute, or Restatement section), check out the novels, plays and anthologies on Law and Literature: A List of Works from George Washington Univ. Prof. Daniel J. Solove. [Thanks to SCU's Heafey Headnotes for this tip!]

[Links updated 6.24.2008]