The Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study

THE BRAMBLE BUSH remains a book often recommended to read when considering law school, before beginning its study, or early in the first semester. It began as a collection of introductory lectures given by Karl Llewellyn to new students at Columbia University. It still speaks to law, legal reasoning, and exam skills in a way that makes it a classic for each new generation.

Llewellyn's pointed and clear explanations of case briefing before class, visualization of facts, active learning in class, the use of precedent, exams, 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, and this book gets to the nuts and bolts 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 the years, the book remains, by all accounts, targeted to the way 'thinking like a lawyer' continues in the modern law school.

Now in a basic digital edition from Quid Pro Books, THE BRAMBLE BUSH features active contents, linked notes, and embedded page numbers from the previous, standard print editions—for continuity of assignments and citations. It corrects the scanning and format errors of recent print editions as well.

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.