Llewellyn’s Classic Guide to Law Study and 1L Advice, The Bramble Bush: features Introduction and notes by Stewart Macaulay

Written over 80 years ago, but highly relevant today, The Bramble Bush is one of the books most frequently and strongly recommended for students to read when considering law school, just before beginning its study, or in the first semester. It began as a collection from a series of introductory lectures given by legal legend Karl Llewellyn to new law students at Columbia University. It still speaks to law, legal reasoning, class prep, and exam skills in a way that makes it a classic for each new generation. The new edition is annotated and introduced: it contains background information and historical context, as well as extensive analysis of the work and its current application to legal education, not found in the original. The text adds explanatory notes where appropriate to update legal terms and historical references. Available in print and ebook editions, linked below.

The Legal Legends Edition features an extensive, modern Introduction by Stewart Macaulay, a senior professor of law at the University of Wisconsin. He places this work into the modern classroom and explains its context and current value to law students and lawyers, as well as changes to legal education since the book first was released. Simply put, Macaulay writes, “The Bramble Bush is a book that anyone interested in law schools or law should read.”

Llewellyn’s pointed and clear explanations of case-briefing before class, visualization of cases, active learning in class, the use of precedent, exam formats, and the limits of logic have proved timeless and highly practical. They remain excellent advice for current students to consider and implement in their own journey into the law. This is no Chamber of Commerce speech of mere platitudes about law practice and the grandeur of the bar. To be sure, Llewellyn believed in law school and legal education, and in dreaming big about a life in the law. But he was–famously–a realist above all, and this book gets to the nitty gritty about studying law successfully in traditional legal education.

Whether from the enduring nature of his hands-on advice, or from the reality that the first year of law study and its classroom method just have not changed very much over many years, the book remains, by all accounts, targeted to the way ‘thinking like a lawyer’ continues in the modern law school.

Now in a high-quality edition from Quid Pro Books, The Bramble Bush is part of the Legal Legends Series. Its ebook formats feature active contents, linked notes, and even embedded page numbers from the previous, classic print editions–for continuity of assignment and referencing. Its paperback and hardcover editions also include embedded pagination, textual annotations, and Professor Macaulay’s new introduction. Quid Pro’s hyperaccurate reproduction of the original text is unlike any other version available, even including modern reprints from traditional publishers (who nonetheless used poor scanning, alter the text, omit sentences, add many italics, misspell legal terms, and change the pagination). Only Quid Pro’s editions of this classic work respect Llewellyn’s book by presenting it as he wrote it, yet in a modern format and clear presentation.

Available in paperback, clothbound, and ebooks:

PAPERBACK: Look for it at Amazon.com, at our QP eStore (fulfilled and shipped by Amazon), at Barnes & Noble, at BooksAMillion, and other retailers. Libraries may also order from YBP Library Services and Ingram. Bookstores may stock from their Quid Pro account or from Ingram and other distributors.

HARDCOVER: at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, BooksAMillion, and other booksellers. (Also in Ingram catalog and from YBP Library Services.) This is a library-quality clothbound edition, and now is the only non-used hardback available of this classic text. It’s also in more readable font and presentation compared to the original hardcover edition, and includes Professor Macaulay’s new introduction and explanatory inserts.

Amazon Kindle edition (Legal Legends) at Amazon.

B&N Nook edition (Legal Legends) at Barnes & Noble.

And at Apple iBooks and iTunes bookstores for the iPad and iPhone, as previewed online here.

This expanded and explained edition is also available from Google Play and Google Books, and in ePUB format from Smashwords; look for it, too, at such ebookstores as Kobobooks, Axis360, and Oyster.

Cataloging:

ISBN 978-1-61027-134-9  (paperback, Legal Legends edition with introduction and notes)
ISBN 978-1-61027-137-0 (clothbound, Legal Legends edition with introduction and notes)
ISBN 978-1-61027-804-1 (trade paperback, 2016 printing, Legal Legends edition with introduction and notes)
ISBN 978-1-61027-136-3 (Kindle, Legal Legends edition with introduction and notes)
ISBN 978-1-61027-135-6  (ePUB, Legal Legends edition with introduction and notes)

In addition, a basic version of this classic work, in modern and accurate ebook formats but without the introduction and notes by Professor Macaulay, is also available for download:

Amazon for Kindle.

Barnes & Noble for Nook.

And at Apple iTunes and iBooks bookstore. (Search store on the device for The Bramble Bush). Previewed here.

Cataloging:

ASIN B0076P3ZY0 (Kindle, basic edition)
ISBN 978-1-61027-117-2  (ePUB, basic edition)

About the Author:

Karl N. Llewellyn (1893-1962) was a distinguished legal scholar and professor of law, teaching at Columbia and the University of Chicago. He was a  leading figure in the school of Legal Realism, and the author of acclaimed books on law study, commercial law, jurisprudence, and legal anthropology.

Basic, unannotated edition of the ebook is shown right.