How Soon Can I Start?
Reading Suggestions for Incoming First-Years

Several members of the entering class have asked what they could read that would help them prepare for the start of a legal career. We recently polled the faculty for their thoughts on this, and their comments follow. These are mere suggestions, and many professors think the best preparation for your first semester is to get plenty of rest. One faculty member, John Setear, concurs with that view, but has a slightly different take:

"I think that this is a bad idea. The students don't need to read ahead before they get here. They need to pay attention when they do get here.  Providing a semi-official reading list will just encourage the students mistakenly to think that law school is like college, and that what they need to do in law school is to master large numbers of facts provided to them by others, rather than to think carefully about small numbers of facts provided by others and even to come up with hypothetical ‘facts’ of their own."

However, several faculty members had recommendations that you might find helpful.

Liz Magill thought Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action would be a good choice and also recommended Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. Ishiguro’s work "does not have anything to do with law directly," Magill explains.  "But the writing is spare and elegant, two characteristics of the best legal writing.  It is also a running commentary on professionalism." Magill teaches administrative law, constitutional law, food and drug law, employment discrimination, and seminars in constitutional structure and administrative law. Her scholarship focuses on administrative law and constitutional law, particularly separation of powers theory and doctrine.

Peter Low thought that Herbert Packer’s The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, would be a good choice because it is an "accessible and provocative collection of ideas about criminal law, most of which will be encountered at some point in law school.  Parts I and III are most relevant to the first year course in criminal law.  Part II primarily relates to criminal procedure, a topic that comes later in the curriculum." Low's major teaching areas are criminal law and federal criminal law. He is also active in the federal courts and civil rights areas. This fall Low will teach a first-year class on criminal law. He is the former University Provost.

Dick Merrill recommended a biography about Washington superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams, The Man to See by Evan Thomas. He also thought that "one of Edward Begley's books, possibly About Schmidt (which bears no resemblance to the movie) would be good." Merrill is a leading expert in administrative, environmental, and food and drug law, and served as Dean of the School of Law from 1980 to 1988.

George Rutherglen thought first of Law's Empire by Ronald Dworkin. "It's a little advanced," warns Rutherglen, "although very accessibly written. I would recommend it to students who have a background in philosophy or political theory." Rutherglen teaches admiralty, civil procedure, employment discrimination, and professional responsibility. This fall he will teach a first-year class on civil procedure.

John Monahan suggested Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. "The book is an excellent and highly readable account of how evolutionary thinking is transforming our understanding of human behavior," he writes. When Monahan arrived at Virginia in 1980, he became the second non-lawyer on the Law School faculty. He teaches courses on social science in law.

Dan Ortiz concurs with Magill's recommendation of Harr's A Civil Action, saying that the book about toxic tort case in Massachusetts "gives people a real feel for in-the-trenches litigation, shows how the court system works, and raises some ethical issues."  He also recommends a recent article, Alex Beam's "Greed on Trial," which appears in the June 2004 Atlantic (Vol. 293, No. 5). "It describes the Massachusetts trial of a claim by some lawyers for their attorney's fees in the tobacco settlement," explains Ortiz.  "It raises interesting ethical issues and also questions like what does the ‘public interest’ mean." Ortiz teaches constitutional law, administrative law, electoral law, civil procedure, and legal theory. This fall he will teach a first-year civil procedure class.

Rip Verkerke takes the title for the most recommendations, and provides two reading lists. "The first is derived from my Ethical Values Seminar," explains Verkerke, "that focuses on works that challenge reigning orthodoxy in various fields."  Those books include:

Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle
Matthew Scully, Dominion
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist
Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, The Satanic Gases
Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother

Verkerke specializes in employment and labor law and suggested that those who might be interested in that field would find it worthwhile to read one of the following books:

Paul Weiler, Governing the Workplace
James Atleson, Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law
 

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