Suggested Reading

Although some professors believe that reading law-related books the summer before entering law school is not helpful (and suggest that, instead, you read science fiction, murder mysteries, history, other non-law related fiction, or whatever else you enjoy), reading several law-related books during the summer before entering law school may help you get into the right frame of mind, and may also help you begin to prepare for your new learning experience at law school. The list that follows was compiled from suggestions of various faculty members at the Appalachian School of Law and other law schools around the country.[1]

It would be far too much for you to try to read the entire list, but try several of these that interest you as a “warm-up” before classes begin. You might want to start with the "top six," or you might want to browse through the full list to see what catches your eye. Finally, you should also peruse the reading list contained in Leonard J. Long's essay, Liberally Educating Law Students: Suggested Readings, published in 18 QLR 237 (1998). This essay attempts to identify a list of 54 books that a law student should have read before graduating from law school if he or she is to be a "well-read lawyer." The list includes works by Holmes, Hart, Rawls, Locke, and Mills, but also includes works by Aristotle, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Melville, and Steinbeck.

When originally posted, all of these titles are available from amazon.com, although availability of a particular title may change from time to time. Most of these titles should be available from Barnes & Noble and other major bookstores (a number of titles were left off of this list because they are no longer available), and many should also be available from your local public library. Many of these books are available in multiple editions; usually the edition listed below is the most recent and/or a paperback edition.

The "Top Six"

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (reissue ed., Warner 1988)

Scott Turow, One L (Warner 1997)

Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet (reissue ed., Vintage 1989)

Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (repr. ed., Fireside 1990)

Marshall Shapo & Helene S. Shapo, Law School Without Fear: Strategies for Success (Foundation 1996)

Richard A. Zitrin & Carol A. Langford, The Moral Compass of the American Lawyer: Truth, Justice, Power, and Greed (Ballantine 1999)

The Full List

Fiction

Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter (repr. ed., Harperperennial Libr. 1992)

John Barth, The Floating Opera (reissue ed., Anchor/Doubleday 1988)

John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (ppbk. ed. Vintage 1999)

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (various editions available)

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Random House 1947; 2d ed. Vintage 1995)

various books by John Grisham

Robert Hellenga, The Fall of a Sparrow (Scribner 1999)

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (reissue ed., Warner 1988)*

Barry Reed, The Verdict (repr. ed., St. Martins Mass Market Paperback 1992)

Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder (25th anniv. ed., St. Martin’s 1983)

Scott Turow, One L (Warner 1997)*

various other books by Scott Turow

Legal Biography

Howard Ball, A Defiant Life: Thurgood Marshall and the Persistence of Racism in America (Crown 1999)

Paul M. Barrett, The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America (Dutton 1999)

Karen Clanton, Dear Sisters, Dear Daughters: Words of Wisdom from Multicultural Women Attorneys Who've Been There and Done That (ABA Publishing 2000)

Jane M. Friedman, America’s First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell (Prometheus 1993)

Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge (repr. ed., Belknap 1995)

Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas: A Biography (repr. ed., Yale Univ. Press 1992)

Arthur Kinoy, Rights on Trial: Odyssey of a People’s Lawyer (Brunner/Mazel 1994)

Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under Law: An Autobiography (pprbk. ed., Farrar Strauss & Giroux 1999)

Mike Papantonio, Clarence Darrow, the Journeyman (Seville 1997)

Richard Polenberg, The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process (repr. ed., Harvard Univ. Press 1999)

Accounts of Notable Cases

Mark Curriden & Leroy Phillips, Jr., Contempt of Court : The Turn Of_The_Century Lynching That Launched 100 Years of Federalism (Faber & Faber 1999)

Pete Earley, Circumstantial Evidence (reissue ed., Bantam 1996)

Don Edward Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (Oxford Univ. Press 1981)

David J. Garrow: Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (upd. ed., Univ. of California Press 1998)

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action (repr. ed., Vintage 1996)

Peter H. Irons, The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court (repr. ed., Penguin 1990)

Howard Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad (reissue ed., Oxford Univ. Press 1997)

Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (Random House 1977)

Alfred H. Knight, The Life of the Law: The People and Cases that have Shaped Our Society, from King Alfred to Rodney King (repr. ed., Oxford Univ. Press 1998)

Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods : The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (repr. ed., Harvard Univ. Press 1998)

Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet (reissue ed., Vintage 1989)*

Rodney A. Smalla, Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book (Crown 1999)

Gerald M. Stern, The Buffalo Creek Disaster (Random House 1977)

John Vidal, McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial (New Press 1998)

Writing and Exposition

(Note: Written expression is involved in most of the law school curriculum; if you have not had much recent writing experience, we strongly suggest that you read one or more of the books in this category)

Terri LeClercq, Guide to Legal Writing Style (2nd ed., Panel Publishing 2000)

Patricia T. O’Connor, Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English (Grosset/Putnam 1996)*

William Strunk, Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style (4th ed., Allyn & Bacon 1999)*

Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (6th ed. Addison-Wesley 1999) (at least one professor indicated that this was the only writing book that he would recommend for reading the summer before law school)

Richard C. Wydick, Plain English for Lawyers (4th ed. Carolina Academic Press 1998)

Legal Process, Legal Philosophy and Legal Reasoning

(Note: some of these books are considered classics, but – other than the ones marked with an asterisk – they may be a bit overwhelming for someone with no prior experience in the law; you may want to come back to some of these during or after your first year in law school)

Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (Yale Univ. Press 1985)

Ronald D. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard Univ. Press 1978)

Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (rev. ed., Yale Univ. Press 1977)

H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd ed., Clarendon Press 1997)

Oliver W. Holmes, The Common Law (Dover 1991)

David Kairys, ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (Basic Books 1998)

Edward H. Levi, Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Univ. of Chicago Press 1962)*

Sanford Levinson, Constitutional Faith (repr. ed., Princeton Univ. Press 1990)

Karl N. Llewellyn, Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study (Oceana 1981)*

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (various editions available)

Jack N. Rakove, ed., Interpreting the Constitution : The Debate over Original Intent (Northeastern Univ. Press 1990)

James Boyd White, Heracles’ Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of Law (Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1989)

The Appalachian Region

Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (Univ. of Tennessee Press 1977)*

(Note: this book is recognized as the classic description of the “old” Appalachia of 90 years ago; although the region is not at all like this today, it is still an interesting historical account of the area)

Lee Smith, Black Mountain Breakdown (reissue ed., Ballantine 1996)*

Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies (reprint ed., Ballantine 1989)

Lee Smith, Oral History (Ballantine 1996)

(Note: Lee Smith is a Grundy native with a number of novels to her credit. Black Mountain Breakdown and Oral History are set in and near her fictional Black Mountain, a thinly disguised Grundy of some years ago)

Miscellaneous Legal and Non-Legal Titles

Derrick A. Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (repr. ed., Basic 1989)

Derrick A. Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (repr. ed., Basic 1993)

Derrick A. Bell, Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home (repr. ed. HarperCollins 1989)

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Mysterious Science of the Law : An Essay on Blackstone's Commentaries (Univ. of Chicago Press 1996)

Harry M Caudill, Slender is the Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office (repr. ed., Univ. Press of Kentucky 1992)

Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (repr. ed., Fireside 1990)*

Richard A. Epstein, Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard Univ. Press 1997)

Kenneth R. Foster, ed., Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and the Law (MIT Press 1999)

Stephen Gillers, Looking at Law School: A Student Guide from the Society of American Law Teachers (4th rev. ed., Meridian 1997)

Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

Grant Gilmore, Ages of American Law (Yale Univ. Press 1979)

James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Pantheon 1999)*

Melissa Fay Greene, Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction (repr. ed., Fawcett 1992)

Kenney F. Hegland, Introduction to the Study and Practice of Law (2nd ed., West Nutshell 1995)

Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland: What Lawyers Really Talk About When They Talk About Law (Penguin 1998)

Rushworth M. Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices : Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (Fireside 1996)

Lawrence Lessig, Code and other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic 1999)

Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion (Random House 1976)

Benjamin Sells, The Soul of the Law (repr. ed., Element 1996)

Fred R. Shapiro & Jane Garry, eds., Trial and Error: An Oxford Anthology of Legal Stories (Oxford Univ. Press 1998)

Marshall Shapo & Helene S. Shapo, Law School Without Fear: Strategies for Success (Foundation 1996)*

Cameron Stracher, Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair (Quill 1999)

Francis L. Wellman, Art of Cross Examination (4th repr. ed., MacMillan 1998)

Richard A. Zitrin & Carol A. Langford, The Moral Compass of the American Lawyer: Truth, Justice, Power, and Greed (Ballantine 1999)