UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

A Memoir of Harvard Law School

Book Jacket: "Broken Contract" by R.D. Kahlenberg

Richard D. Kahlenberg
Foreword by Robert Coles

A troubling portrait of the culture of a top law school

"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."

Martin Peretz, New Republic

"Should be read by every bright mind even remotely contemplating law school. It's much more than a memoir. It's a brutally honest picture of how law schools transform idealism into greed. The book is an indictment of American legal education. Perhaps if it's read and passed around, the current stampede toward law will be halted."

John Grisham

"In One L, Scott Turow wrote of Socratic cruelty at Harvard Law School. But that was just part of the story. Richard Kahlenberg's Broken Contract reveals an even more insidious and costly process: how law school can transmute idealism into avarice. Kahlenberg's writing seethes with the outrage of a man who feels jilted by the school he wanted to love. He cites incident after incident to show how students' natural public-spiritedness is turned into self-interest, cloaked in a grey flannel suit, and delivered almost exclusively to the service of the powerful. Broken Contract should be required reading for every college student considering law school."

Senator Charles S. Robb

"Kahlenberg's recollection . . . is an instructive mix of reportage, commentary, and self-examination, all of it bound together by the dramatic tension of whether or not the author's first-day idealism would survive second- and third-year law school realism."

Washington Post Book World

"Broken Contract is a forceful cri de coeur."

Los Angeles Times

"Richly anecdotal, forceful and smart. . . . A lively, provocative book."

Legal Times

Richard D. Kahlenberg is a fellow at the Century Foundation, where he writes about education, equal opportunity, and civil rights. His most recent book is The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action.

Legal Studies / Memoir
264 pp.
LC 99-36502
$24.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-234-8
1999

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