Graduate & Law School Advice

Resumes and Cover Letters (widely applicable)

1. Graduate School

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Getting Strong Letters of Recommendation

Graduate School Advice & Resources

  • “On Graduate School and Love,” by William Pannapacker. (“So the rhetoric of “love” has an ambiguous meaning when it’s applied to graduate school. It can be impossibly idealistic, and deeply rooted in powerful experiences that override economic self-­interest. It also can be deeply cynical, a means of devaluing the work of some for the benefit of others.”)

  • “Moving the Goalposts in Graduate Education” by Marc Bosquet (“As responsible analysts have understood since the mid-1990s, this [lack of tenure-track jobs] isn’t because of an oversupply of Ph.D.s but an intentionally created undersupply of tenure-stream positions. Beginning in 1970, administrators began systematically turning teaching-intensive jobs into part-time or nontenurable positions that — they claim — don’t require a Ph.D.“)

  • “Alt-ac Careers and the Purposes of Humanities Doctoral Programs” (by Alex Reid, on his blog Digital Digs:

    1. “Spending 8 years getting a PhD in the humanities probably doesn’t make good financial sense. So don’t do it for that reason. (I know, that’s a shocker.)

    2. If you want to get a PhD for other, non-financial reasons, then, as they say, “it’s a free country.” However, it’s important to have both a national and program-level understanding of the career prospects of your degree, because at some point you will be looking for a job and you should at least make an informed decision.

    3. For different reasons, we should make an effort to create better careers for college teachers, though even if we did, point #1 would still apply.

    4. Part of creating such college positions should be thinking about the alternative-academic careers PhDs pursue on our campuses and ensuring as well as we can that those are well-paid and secure positions.”

  • Finding Fit (Cheryl Ball’s advice on understanding the various kinds of academic jobs. Useful for planning where to attend grad school and what you might do after you complete grad school.)

2. Law School

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If You Are Considering Law School

If You Are Pursuing Law School

Materials That Every Law Student (and Lawyer) Should Own

Get, read, and annotate the following:

Articles

  • Orin Kerr’s “How to Read a Legal Opinion” (PDF document) (Great practical advice.)

  • Orin Kerr’s “Line Drawing” (PDF document) (Your law professors will ask you “Where do you draw the line?”)

  • Lon Fuller’s classic “The Case of the Speluncean Explorers” (PDF document),(See also the extensive commentary by scholars and follow-up opinions, which a Google search will reveal. This is a performance of particular legal philosophies and very useful to see how particular approaches to the law play out in deciding a case).

  • Ruggero J. Aldisert, Stephen Clowney, and Jeremy D. Peterson’s “Logic for Law Students: How to Think Like a Lawyer” (PDF document) (Terrific primer on logical reasoning in legal situations, often implied rather than taught explicitly).

Books

  • The current editions of Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, Redbook: A Manual of Legal Style, and Modern English Usage (also sign up for his Law Prose Lessons)

  • The current edition of Ross Guberman’s Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates. Also, check out his Brief Catch Hall of Fame for models of excellent writing.

  • Amanda Haverstick’s Dear 1L: Notes to Nurture a New Legal Writer

  • Bryan Garner, et. al.’s The Law of Judicial Precedent

  • The current edition of Wilson Huhn’s The 5 Types of Legal Argument

  • Richard Farnsworth’s The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law

  • The current edition of David S. Romantz and Kathleen Elliott Vinson’s Legal Analysis: The Essential Skill

  • The current edition of A Lawyer Writes: A Practical Guide to Legal Analysis by Christine Nero Coughlin, Joan Malmud, and Sandy Patrick

  • Brian N. Larson’s free, open-access textbook Legal Argumentation: Reasoning and Writing About the Law (PDF document)

  • Philip Bobbitt’s Constitutional Interpretation

Courses

3. Statements of Purpose & Personal Statements

In addition to the #1 bit of advice to “write the statement only you could write” (i.e., don’t be generic, predictable, or a walking cliche), read and consider this advice. These statements will require 10-20 drafts to be truly effective. Here is some good advice: