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.

Legal Writing

• Ryan McCarl, Elegant Legal Writing
• Ross Guberman, Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Legal Advocates
• Noah A. Messing, The Art of Advocacy: Briefs, Motions, and Writing Strategies of America’s Best Lawyers
• Bryan A. Garner, The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts
• Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers

Learning the Law and Succeeding in Law School

• Richard M. Fischl and Jeremy Paul, Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams
• Dennis J. Tonsing, 1000 Days to the Bar, but the Practice of Law Begins Now
• Amanda Haverstick, Dear 1L
• Examples and Explanations series

Legal theory and interpretation

• Griffin & Schlag, How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine
• Ward Farnsworth, The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About the Law
• Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
• Randy Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law

Oral advocacy and persuasion

• Brian K. Johnson and Marsha Hunter, The Articulate Advocate: New Techniques of Persuasion for Trial Lawyers
• Shane Read, Winning at Persuasion for Lawyers
• David C. Frederick, The Art of Oral Advocacy

Civil Procedure

• Richard Freer, Law School Legends: Civil Procedure (audio)
• Richard Freer, Civil Procedure
• Joseph Glannon, *Civil Procedure:
• Arthur R. Miller, Sum and Substance: Civil Procedure (audio) - out-of-date but still worthwhile

Torts

• William Prosser, Prosser and Keeton on Torts (or the more up-to-date but longer Dan B. Dobbs, The Law of Torts)
• Steven Finz, Sum and Substance: Torts (audio)

Contracts (Doctrine)

• Marvin Chirelstein, Contracts and Case Analysis in the Law of Contracts
• David Epstein, Sum and Substance: Contracts (audio)
• Randy Barnett, Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts

Contracts (Drafting)

• Tina L. Stark, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do
• Kenneth A. Adams, A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting
• Reed Dickerson, The Fundamentals of Legal Drafting

Criminal Law

• Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law
• Joshua Dressler, Sum and Substance: Criminal Law (audio)

Property

• John G. Sprankling, Understanding Property Law
• Linda H. Edwards, Estates in Land and Future Interests: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Julian C. Juergensmeyer, Sum and Substance: Property (audio)

Constitutional Law

• Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies
• Mary Cheh, Sum and Substance: Constitutional Law (audio)

Productivity

• Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
• David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
• John S. Hammond et al., Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

Trial and Depositions (mainly for attorneys)

• Shane Read, Winning at Trial
• Steven Lubet and J.C. Lore, Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis and Practice
• Jeffrey Kestler, Questioning Techniques and Tactics
• David M. Malone and Peter T. Hoffman, The Effective Deposition
• Ronald H. Carlson et al., Objections at Trial
• Thomas A. Mauet, Trial Techniques and Trials

Non-law nonfiction

• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
• Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
• Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?

Literature (limited to books I’ve read in the past decade)

• Steinbeck, East of Eden
• Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
• Nabokov, Lolita
• Eugenides, Middlesex
• Eliot, Middlemarch
• Franzen, The Corrections
• Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
• Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Reference

• Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage
• The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation (same rules as the Bluebook but much easier to use)
• Bryan A. Garner, The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style
• Black’s Law Dictionary
• Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure

Ryan McCarl is the author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024) and a founding partner of business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP. For more tips about writing and argument, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing newsletter and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.