Planet Law School II, by Atticus Falcon

Book review by: Erin Lindsay Calkins. Published July 2008, last updated March 2011.

At over 800 bound pages, this book surpasses the weight of Pluto. Which is the reason, I suppose, it’s called Planet Law School. Its size isn’t its only flaw: the method that Falcon advocates for handling the first year of law school is haphazard, nonsensical, and rife with pitfalls.

Aspiring law students tend to over-prepare. We want to succeed; we want to make money; we want to change the world; we want to achieve. Useful law school preparation books offer advice on how to focus these tendencies and aspirations so that we can be better at studying minutiae and writing streamlined examinations in extremely short time periods. Falcon’s book does exactly the opposite: he advocates every method of study from outlines to study groups to LEEWS. Moreover, he makes you work through chapters of fiction, poetry, hypotheticals, and various non-fiction treatises in order to deduce these preferred strategies. Hence, the 800 pages.

Finally, his tone is half- humorous, half-serious, and completely earnest. I cannot tell if Mr. Finch wishes me to laugh, succeed in law school, or merely take his word for it. I would like to excel as a law student, and this is why I purchased the book. For Finch to occupy so many pages, even in a roundabout way of doing so, seems disingenuous.

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