It is difficult to understand why the three major works of Mr. Osborn are out of print, or for that matter, why there are not more books from this fine author. Mr. Osborn's work should be required reading for anyone even remotely thinking of going to law school.

It is just okay.

Being a big fan of the film version of The Paper Chase I was kind of expecting a 1940's book that would flesh out the character of Ford and add some depth to the story but what arrived from Amazon was copyright 1978 and had references to mini skirts, getting high, and a quote about Vietnam War protests.

I enjoyed reading it but it was not nearly as good as the movie. It didn't much new plot developments; maybe 15% of the book consists of new things that are not in the film version of The Paper Chase. For example Hart and Ford are at a diner when a guy runs in, snatches a hamburger from the plate of the people next to them at the counter, runs outside and stands there banging on the window and giving them "the finger". Hart, curious, goes out to talk to the fellow and ends up in a fistfight. One benefit was you could be inside Hart's head and know what he was thinking. Susan is much colder to Hart in the book too.

The movie was a masterpiece. The book (at least the 1978 edition that arrived at my house) will only satisfy true fans of the film, desperate, perhaps, to wring a few more drops out of this great story in the manner that a fan of Star Wars might read "A Splinter In the Mind's Eye" (featuring Luke Skywalker as a character).

I know my hometown library lists, in their online catalog, a 1940 edition of the Paper Chase so surely there's an older version floating around. The one I got from Amazon, with it's references to the 1960's, seems like a modern rewrite of the novel, made expressly for fans of the movie.

It's a good book. "...law is rational, people are not." Without getting into the experience of the tradition, one would never know how much fun is to become part of it. One would only know "...how difficult is to extent the tradition." Enjoy!

The TV series based on this book was well done and I would very much like to read the book itself. Being a retired legal secretary, the series depicted many events in the life of a law student, as told to me by attorneys for whom I worked.