law school application books

[younghova]

what book(s) should I buy to help me write my law school applications next fall?

I'm sure this has already been discussed.  so i apologize about that. 

[luminescence]

two useful ones are richard montauk's "how to get into the top law schools" and anna ivey's "the ivey guide to law school admissions"

[SilentSwirl]

two useful ones are richard montauk's "how to get into the top law schools" and anna ivey's "the ivey guide to law school admissions"

I agree, especially about the second one. I would also add "Law School Confidential" to the list. As well as a book with a bunch of good "resume buzz words" for any kind of work you've done. Then look on the Harvard site, they have some links to what your law school resume should look like (which is different than your work resume).

I also picked up a book or two about "how to write law school personal statements" -- any of these will do. You won't be using them so much to guage what a good PS looks like, but to get the juices flowing in your memory about the types of things you could be writing about. After reading a few, I found myself thinking - gee, I never would have thought to write about that, but I have similar experiences!

[younghova]

thanks for the info.  i just ordered ivey's book from amazon. 

[StudentUVA]

All of the books i read (montauk's and ivey's) were pretty useless to be honest. Montauk pretty much talks about how you have to be sure that you want to be a lawyer and how you should take a few years off to decide and bla bla. The sample essays and resumes are from people who have done a crap load of stuff- something a typical applicant didn't have a chance to do. Plus, if you already did something amazing you dont need this book to remind you of it, and if you didn't then this book won't help. I did find the survey part pretty cool as you could see what adcoms say about various subjects but much of it is trivial.
Ivey's book was even worse in my view. I cant even remember anything useful from it. Anyhow, this is just my own two cents. I think you'd be better off by buying some book with a lot of sample ps's to help you write a good personal statement.

[younghova]

yeah, a book with well written PS's to learn off will help alot. 

I'm kind of speptical of Ivey's book too. hopefully Ivey's book will give me some sort of direction on the appropriate writing style.  I spoke to a few of my old english profs who had no idea what admissions were looking for.