I was culling my old papers and came across this list of "Optional Summer Reading for New Law Students" circulated by University of Washington School of Law in 1994.
- Anarchy and Elegance by Chris Goodrich
- Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
- The Associates by John Jay Osborne
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Billy Budd & Bartleby the Scrivner by Herman Melville
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
- The Bramble Bush" On Our Law and Its Study by Karl Llewellyn
- Broken Contract by Richard Kahlenberg
- The Brothel Boy by Norval Morris
- The Client by John Grisham
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
- Fatal Vision by John McGinnis
- The Firm by John Grisham
- The Future of Law in a Multi-Cultural World by Ada Bozeman
- Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis
- The Goldmark Case: An American Libel Trial by William Dwyer
- The Good Mother by Sue Miller
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- Inherit the Wind by Jeorme Lawrence
- No No Boy by John Okada
- Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
- Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
- Reversal of Fortune by Alan Deshowitz
- Simple Justice by Richard Kluger
- The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
- A Time to Kill by John Grisham
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Sixteen years have passed since the list was made, are there other books that you'd recommend for people entering law school? Here are my own suggestions:
- A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
- Innocent by Scott Turow
- Reversal by Michael Connelly
- Bargaining for Advantage:Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People by G. Richard Shell
- Getting More by Stuart Diamond
