Broken Contract by Richard D. Kahlenberg, Robert Coles

New Republic - Martin Peretz

Kahlenberg's brilliant and brilliantly written memoir of his years as a student at the Harvard Law School is the most compelling critique of legal education of this generation. Lively and devastating, Broken Contract is a must, not only for those who are already lawyers, but, more important, also for those who want to be lawyers. This book could change their lives.

Library Journal

``How is it that so many students can enter law school determined to promote liberal ideals and leave three years later to counsel the least socially progressive elements of our society?'' Kahlenberg focuses on this remarkable transformation in his memoir of his Harvard Law School (HLS) education, chronicling his successful resistance to the pressure to practice corporate law over public-interest law. He describes the debate within the HLS faculty over the Critical Legal Studies movement, essentially a struggle between radical and conservative theorists. But this is also Kahlenberg's own personal story, providing the same inside look at HLS that Scott Turow does in One L (Farrar, 1988. rev. ed.)--the anxieties and boredom of class, the pecularities of professors, and the fixation on grades. Unlike Turow, whose narrative ends with the first year of law school, Kahlenberg writes of his experiences from matriculation to commencement. A required purchase for any library holding One L .-- Elizabeth Fielder Olson, Archer & Greiner, Haddonfield, N.J.

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