The Language of Law School

Anyone who has attended law school knows that it entails an important intellectual transformation, frequently referred to as "learning to think like a lawyer." This process, which subtly induces students to think and talk in radically new and different ways about conflicts, is largely accomplished in first-year law school classes where professors inculcate new attitudes toward spoken and written language. Elizabeth Mertz's book is the first study to truly delve into that language to reveal the complexities of how this process takes place. She concludes that the transformation law students undergo is as much a shift in how they approach language-how they talk and read and write-as in how they "think."