Ah, One L. The classic tale of Scott Turow’s first year at Harvard Law School during the 1970s. I doubt you’ll find a book that inspires more debate among law students, law professors, and lawyers, especially when discussing it’s value as a prep tool before law school. On the one hand, some say One L is outdated, excessively dramatic, and downright misleading about how law school is. On the other hand, some say the story still holds an element of truth, especially for those law schools that embrace the sort of “fend for yourself” attitude that Harvard seems to preach in the book.
I find that One L is a valuable prep tool, even if you’re law school is not as difficult or combative as Harvard was back in the day (and for all I know, still is). One L‘s value comes from the way that Turow explains, in vivid detail, what it’s like when a law student goes over the edge. When that happens, generally what follows is extreme stress, burn out, and an occasional loss of one’s moral compass. But that edge is important for law students to recognize, no matter what you’re after in law school.
If your goal is to get through law school with as little stress as possible, then you’re going to need to know where that edge is so you stay as far away from it as possible. Someone with that aim should read One L with an eye toward noticing the little signs that Turow missed as the pressure to overachieve continued to mount. There are more than a few warnings for the law student who is working themselves at a rate they cannot sustain emotionally.
Maybe you physically can do it, maybe you have the mental firepower, but often law students don’t have the ability to buy in to the emotional and social sacrifices needed. to achieve at an extremely super-high level in law school. Some can’t stand that amount of solitary studying, some can’t stand questioning their beliefs to the level necessary, and some just never recharge their batteries and end up running on empty (probably what happened to Turow in One L). If this is what you fear about law school, read with an eye toward recognizing what happens when you overstretch yourself.
If your goal is to kick ass, take names, and reap all the rewards that comes with doing that in law school, then you need to recognize that line for another reason: so you can get as close to it as possible without going over. The task here is more difficult. You need to learn to recognize all the warning signs, but you also need to learn how to ignore some of them, particularly the early ones.
The reason is you’re going to need to learn how to push through the early doubt and stress in order to get stronger. In exercise, particularly running, there is a distinction between pain and discomfort. Discomfort is the body’s natural response to being stressed. Pain is the result of either overstressing or making a mistake (say you took a wrong step and twisted your ankle). You need to learn when you are simply working hard enough to stress yourself, and when you are working so hard that something like pain is being felt. Turow’s description of the fear of failure being a motivating force is a good example, until it overtakes him during his second final and he can’t sit down. That’s an extreme example over overworking yourself where actual physical pain is felt, but you get the point.
So go out and snag One L. If you happen to go through the Amazon affiliate links on this page, many thanks. One final word of warning though: do not read One L as a preview of what you can expect in law school. The only way law school will be remotely like that is if you go into it expecting that sort of experience, at which point it will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even if you go to a balls-to-the-walls, shark tank-esque law school, we’re here to keep even a place like that from turning into Harvard in the ’70s.
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