After my first year of law school, I put together a list of books and other resources I believed incoming law students and 1Ls would find helpful. This post updates and expands the list to include books helpful to law students, prelaw students, attorneys, and paralegals at any stage of their career. I’ve also added my own book about legal writing to the list.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon and Audible!
Ryan McCarl’s book Elegant Legal Writing is now available from the University of California Press. I’ve pasted the jacket copy and blurbs below.
I’ll continue to post excerpts and other useful content on the Elegant Legal Writing blog and on LinkedIn. By sharing posts you find helpful, you can help me spread the word about a book that can do a lot of good in the legal profession. It will help many attorneys, law students, and others write more confidently and persuasively.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. Ryan also maintains a free blog and email newsletter with legal writing tips, and regularly posts about legal writing and strategy on LinkedIn.
Thank you for your time and readership.
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Ryan McCarl (LinkedIn | Twitter/X | Blog) is an attorney and law professor in Los Angeles.
What is the best way to study for the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE)? I made a short YouTube video demonstrating my favorite strategies.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. These strategies include:
Doing thousands of MBE practice questions with Adaptibar or books containing past questions. Creating your own outline for each subject from scratch Populating your homemade outline with rules gleaned from answer explanations for practice questions you didn’t understand Creating your own audio resources using Speechify or another text-to-speech app Listening to lectures from YouTube, the Sum and Substance series, or other sources while you run, drive, or do the dishes Working with a bar tutor or study partner Check out the video here:
How should a person preparing for the bar exam—or for black-letter law school courses such as those taught to 1Ls—master a subject’s legal rules as efficiently as possible? After spending hundreds of hours tutoring law students and bar examinees, I’ve come up with the method below.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. Build momentum by starting with one or two MBE subjects that interest you, then gradually add additional subjects.
Understanding Trump’s Betrayal By Ryan McCarl and John Rushing
The recent revelation that President Trump attempted to coerce Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election led not only to an impeachment inquiry, but also to a flood of news and misinformation. Only the most dialed-in voters can keep up with the scandal’s details, and new details are emerging every day.
Every American should understand the essential underlying facts as well as the historical context: what Trump did, why it was illegal, and why it matters.
After my 1L year of law school, I put together the following list of books and other resources I found helpful. I’ve also added my own book about legal writing to the list.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on [Amazon](http://bit.ly/elw-book) and [Audible](https://bit.ly/elw-audible)! Buy a copy here and follow Ryan's legal-writing blog at [elegantlegalwriting.com](https://elegantlegalwriting.com). (* = essential/most valuable)
General: Richard M. Fischl and Jeremy Paul, Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams* Dennis J.
The Daily Journal, a newspaper for California attorneys, just published my article Claim preclusion across jurisdictions: navigating the labyrinth.
📚 Ryan McCarl's book Elegant Legal Writing is now available on Amazon! Buy a copy at bit.ly/elw-book and follow his blog at elegantlegalwriting.com. I approached this article in part as a teaching and writing exercise, and as a chance to articulate some of the problem-solving methods I apply to legal questions. I did my best to simplify a complicated subject while keeping the article readable.