”McClurg has the ability to take excruciating situations, turn them around, and make them funny. He laughs at everything, including himself, but retains a reverence for the legal profession that is poignant. It is a gut-busting good time that leaves you proud of your chosen profession and makes your sides ache at the same time.”

“Dispense[s] buckets of advice without ever removing tongue from cheek. ... a sarcastic, ‘loving parody’ from the eyes of one who knows.”

"Professor McClurg may be the next Dave Barry. ... McClurg's unique outlook on law school life is guaranteed to make you to make you laugh out loud. Five stars and two thumbs up!"

"[T]akes the sting right out of the high-handed pomposity, the double-talk, and officious seriousness of our legal training institutions ... [A] barrel of screwy fun ... [A] one of a kind piece of work that you don't have to be a lawyer or law student to love."

"Laughter is what McClurg’s book provides. Lots of laughter. Heaps and mounds of undulating and ululating laughter. ... McClurg makes the law school experience sparkle and shine. He has the unique ability among satirists to make us laugh with each other, but never at each other."

"[T]he quintessential book on the three years of torment and tribulation known as law school. ... [H]owlingly, gut-wrenchingly, turn purple and blow food out your nose funny! ... [S]hould be required reading for every law student and lawyer."

"If your smart bone is connected to your funny bone, there's only one book for you: Andrew McClurg's The Law School Trip. It left me holding my sides while thinking: wait! I never thought about that before! This is serious! This book gave me more pure pleasure than anything I've read in months."

"A wonderful, twisted tour through legal education that had me laughing all the way. ... [T]he perfect antidote for legal education ... [A] must read for law students, professors and lawyers."

"Hard to find words to describe it. Spectabulous? Fanacular? McClurg brings legal humor to new heights. ... Very, very funny!"

What a 'Trip'! Hilariously poking fun at law students, professors, judges, and the law itself, Andrew McClurg's The Law School Trip is truly a classic of legal humor."

"A delicious read from beginning to end."

"You'll howl with delight ... chortle uncontrollably ... your funny bone will ache."

"There is no doubt that this creative and amusing masterpiece will be a classic. You will feel the need to share excerpts with friends, then they will borrow the book and never return it!"

"There was not a single page of this book that didn't make me laugh out loud."

     Book Review: So, you thought you were big stuff?, The Opinion (Aug. 2002)(reviewed by Mary Kilgus)
     
     Just in case you take yourselves too seriously—sometimes a danger with law students and faculty—Andrew McClurg is around to make fun of you. “The Law School Trip,” his new book, is good for some excellent guffaws if you have the talent to laugh at yourself as much as others.
     
     McClurg, you might remember, wrote the “Harmless Error” column in the ABA Journal for the last four-and-a-half years. Now he is in the website business at lawhaha.com and teaches law in Miami at Florida International University College of Law.
     
     No one is immune from McClurg’s slings. He covers everything from the fateful decision to think about going to law school to the application process, the LSAT, the First Days (I recommend that 1Ls, who really take things too seriously, read this section), the Faculty—did you know you can be separated into categories?—all the way to the Bar Exam and dealing with lay people who say they “hate lawyers.”
     
     My initial favorite part was the comparison between the sensations involved with attending law school and the ingestion of LSD. ( Hence the name, The Law School Trip) At first, it sounds totally illogical, shocking even, given the fine, upstanding nature of law school people, but after McClurg’s discussion, you sort of see the similarities. Theoretically, of course.
     
     The cool thing about this book, though, is that you have to be a law school person to get the jokes. I mean, I was wiping-my-eyes laughing over the fictitious Blue Book editors dialogue, who were arguing over the use of commas, but when I read it to my family, they didn’t get it. Of course! It would take someone who struggled over and cursed the Blue Book to get jokes about the possible incredible anality of Blue Book editors, and I think that’s the interesting thing about this book—McClurg sees all our foibles. In our undies, so to speak.
     
     It takes one to know one, as they say. As with all humor, there are kernels of truth at the base. That’s what makes this book not only funny but deliciously funny. McClurg’s list of areas of law you should familiarize yourself with in case you’re asked about them at a cocktail party is only a hoot if you’ve actually been subjected to legal questions at cocktail parties. McClurg has the ability to take excruciating situations, turn them around, and make them funny.
     
     He laughs at everything, including himself, but retains a reverence for the legal profession that is poignant.
     
     It is a gut-busting good time that leaves you proud of your chosen profession and makes your sides ache at the same time. I recommend it highly.

     Book Review: Taking A Trip, The National Jurist, The Magazine for Law Students (Jan. 2002)
     
     Andrew McClurg isn’t the first law professor to take pity on the plight of law students. But he may be the first to dispense buckets of advice without ever removing tongue from cheek.
     
     The result is The Law School Trip, a sarcastic, ‘loving parody’ of the J.D. experience from the eyes of one who knows. ...
     
     “I think law school is too serious and the legal profession is too serious,” McClurg said. “And [students are] so uptight to begin with. It’s especially palpable during the first year.”
     
     McClurg, who also dispenses wisdom and wit at www.lawhaha.com, had his sights on students who feel a bit overwhelmed by the legal education experience—in particular those who belly flop the first semester.
     
     “A lot of good students get discouraged after the first semester,” he said. “They’re all usually cream of the crop to begin with. But I’ve seen students who hang in there make dramatic improvements in their grades.”
     
     McClurg is hoping to spread the lightheartedness as far as possible—hopefully in the movie version.
     
     “I’m counting on the blockbuster deal to come through next week,” he said.

     This book is a keeper! Since most attempts at written humor fail, it was a rare and wonderful excursion into laughdom to read Andrew McClurg's "The Law School Trip." Professor McClurg may be the next Dave Barry. Whether he's giving instructions on preparing yourself for the Socratic method or analyzing the "Horribly Evil Bluebook," McClurg's unique outlook on law school life is guaranteed to make you to make you laugh out loud. Five stars and two thumbs up!"

     Text-Book.com (reviewed by Jessica Bradburn)
     
     Andrew J. McClurg takes the sting right out of the high-handed pomposity, the double-talk, and officious seriousness of our legal training institutions in this book that has alternately been described as "very, very, funny", "absolutely, positively, stupendously magnificent," and "spectaculous."
     
     Fitting descriptions of a hilarious and sometimes absurd work that translates the author's experience as a student, teacher and practicing lawyer into a barrel of screwy fun.
     
     There have been plenty of books that have attempted to make law funny, sort of like a M*A*S*H episode for lawyers. Most of them are about as funny as a heart attack. And God knows that there are plenty of "smart" books on law that lack humor entirely.
     
     What makes McClurg's book stand out is that he is:
     
     1) smart enough to genuinely know what he's talking about;
     2) human enough to genuinely find it funny; and
     3) skilled enough to translate the two to the page.
     
     It may sound like a simple equation but take our word for it, if more people could actually pull it off we'd all be a lot happier.
     
     As it stands, McClurg has put together a one of a kind piece of work that you don't have to be a lawyer or law student to love. Although it helps. :)

     Book Review: A Much-Laugh, Must-Read,The Law Teacher (reviewed by Professor Mark Drumbl)
     
     I peer into the frazzled faces of the students sitting in their first contracts class of their lives. And, gauging from the five-star "I love it" comments posted on amazon.com by ribald law student readers, I figure that some of the students out there already have read Andrew McClurg's The Law School Trip. Adorned with a psychedelic cover and festooned throughout with plenty of wit, The Law School Trip is a delightful parody on the lawyerlimbo of law school, that necessary rite of passage into lawyerdom.
     
     Just as I try to get students to think in the categories of promises and contracts, offers and acceptances (and appreciate the centrifugal force of the mailbox rule), they create categories of their own to make sense of the law school experience. Now McClurg has provided a road-map for them. His typology of law teachers – including the body-pierced "Professor formerly known as Ed," the performer, the legend, the strange creature from outer space – humanizes the professoriat. So, too, has McClurg provided students a road-map to understand their comrades-in-arms in the 1L class and to survive the disemboweling effects of the Socratic method. McClurg even takes on the Bluebook – that bastion of "technical due process," its acolyte The Comma, and their enforcers, the law review board – and makes all three warm, fuzzy, and loveable. His tips regarding "leegle righting" are hilarious yet helpful.
     
     The law school community badly need to laugh. Especially students and teachers involved in that topsy-turvy first year. Laughter is what McClurg's book provides. Lots of laughter. Heaps and mounds of undulating and ululating laughter. Laughter that ranges from the tightly-lipped smile when you realize that he is writing about something you previously thought only you had observed, to the hearty guffaw when he takes something everyone has observed but no one ever has made funny. Such as the fact that Hadley v. Baxendale is one of the most boring things ever written. It's true. But at least I've now got McClurg's action-packed rewrite of Hadley v. Baxendale (where Baxendale delays shipping the millshaft because he uses it to thwart a shark attack) to spice up the topic of consequential damages and the limitations thereto.
     
     There's a lot of writing that purports to be legal humor. We've all been impelled to read some of it. We've all been cornered at boring parties and forcibly told some of it. And, frankly, it's not funny. It's stereotypical, ridiculing and demeaning; it makes a caricature of us all by denying the spirit, generosity, and creativity of our profession. The kind of humor that laughs at us. But McClurg's is strikingly different. McClurg makes the law school experience sparkle and shine. He has the unique ability among satirists to make us laugh with each other, but never at each other.
     
     Folks, this is a must-read. Law schools – assign this as part of a 1L orientation package. Mental health experts, this book has therapeutic karma. And McClurg, you must write more of this!

     Book Review: The Law School Trip (the insider's guide to law school), The Bimonthly Review of Law Books (reviewed by Charles Crawford)
     
     Perhaps once a decade, an author happens along who sums up in print a journey that has been shared and suffered through by many. John Steinbeck did it for the Great Depression, James Jones did it for World War II, William Faulkner did it for the Southern experience, and Alfred E. Neumann did it for the Mad® generation. Until now, however, no one has written the quintessential book on the three years of torment and tribulation known as law school.
     
     Until now, I say, because now, rising up from our great nation's heartland, Professor Andrew J. McClurg, of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock law school, has penned his immortal tome, The Law School Trip.
     
     "Wait a minute," I can hear you asking, "isn't that where Bill Clinton taught law school between stints as governor of Arkansas? Is this just another tell-all book featuring stained blue dresses and thong underwear, hot interns and hot summer nights?"
     
     Well, yes, that is where Bill Clinton taught, but no (unfortunately), this book is not about lawyers in lust, although perhaps McClurg would look good in thong underwear, and there is no indication that he is prejudiced against interns. Instead, the good professor has given us a detailed map through the whole law school process, from application to graduation and job search, with stops along the way for "The Professor Formerly Known as Ed," who has a tattoo of Judge Learned Hand on his shaved head and sticks of burning incense hanging from various bodily orifices, and the law student's list of things to be anxious about, which include the Rule Against Perpetuities and running out of beer and heroin.
     
     People, you have got to read this book! First and foremost, because it is howlingly, gut-wrenching, turn purple and blow food out your nose funny! Even if you have the good sense and moral superiority to reject the notion of a career in the law for something more socially responsible and remunerative, such as loan sharking, you will love this book. But if you have been to law school, are thinking about going, or-poor soul-are there now, not only will the book be even funnier, it will also guide you through the process, or bring back nightmares and night sweats if you have already graduated.
     
     Good satire is always very, very close to the truth. As you read this book, you will realize that McClurg is not just funny, but that his humor actually exposes the truth about law school more than a straightforward, non-questioning how-to book. McClurg knows law school, having spent most of his adult life there, attending and teaching, and he could have written a serious, pedantic, and boring book about the experience that would have sold six copies. Instead, apparently inspired by the muse of mushrooms and peyote buttons, he has authored a book that actually and truly describes lawyers' boot camp, but with a twisted viewpoint that leaves the reader doubled over laughing. To prepare for the feeling that comes over you when called on in class, he suggests spinning circles until you reach 100 rpms, gulping a gallon of laxative, chaining your neck to a radiator and placing a revolver to your head. When discussing an issue of transferred intent on an exam, he advises not to use an overly breezy tone such as "A capped C with his 9, which turned out to be a major **** up because he was aiming at another dude."
     
     When I was in law school, someone had written on the wall of the men's bathroom: "The best way to keep all of this **** in perspective is to have sex on a regular basis." It sounded like good advice, and I wish I could have taken it. The next best thing would have been McClurg's book. It should be required reading for every law student and lawyer, particularly those who take themselves too seriously.

     There are a lot of smart books about the law, but most of them are as dull as a rainy day in Cleveland. And there are a lot of funny books about the law, but most of them are pretty dumb. If your smart bone is connected to your funny bone, there’s only one book for you: Andrew McClurg’s The Law School Trip. It left me holding my sides while thinking: wait! I never thought about that before! This is serious! This book gave me more pure pleasure than anything I’ve read in months.

     The Law School Trip is a wonderful, twisted tour through legal education that had me laughing all the way. I recognized my students, my faculty colleagues, and myself (groan) in McClurg's hilarious images. The Law School Trip is the perfect antidote to legal education, which likes to take itself too seriously. The Law School Trip is a must read for law students, professors, and lawyers.

     Hard to find words to describe it. Spectabulous? Fanacular? McClurg brings legal humor to new heights. It's about time someone told the world the truth about law school: it's just a barrel of laughs. Very, very funny!

     What a "Trip"! Hilariously poking fun at law students, professors, judges, and the law itself, Andrew McClurg's The Law School Trip is truly a classic of legal humor. Armed with the infectious sense of humor that bubbles from this hilarious little gem of a book, law students and lawyers will be prepared to meet their daily dose of legal malarkey with the irreverence it deserves. It's almost funny enough (but not quite) to make you want to go back and try law school again (but, this time, with a sense of humor)!

     What makes McClurg's book a delicious read from beginning to end is his sublime sense of the ridiculousness of the process by which American society creates many of its elite (a process which, by the way, McClurg obviously has great love for).
     
     McClurg's work of humor fits perfectly the present mood of a country which graduated from one of its most prestigious law schools a man who could, under the most absurd and awkward of circumstances, parse the meaning of "is" with a straight face, all the while presiding over life and death matters as President of the United States. For what McClurg accomplishes on nearly every page is to make the reader share with him his amused and amusing outlook on the legal profession and the way it begets and perpetuates itself, whether he is writing about the goofy logic of the Palsgraf case or the job interview.
     
     McClurg's sympathy is with the students, and it is because we have all been victims of the educational system, whether lawyers or not, that we respond with such delighted recognition. Since somehow we can't manage to produce lawyers any other way, we might as well enjoy it.

     Have you ever thought about attending law school? Do you live within 500 miles of a law school? Did you know that Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court graduated from law school? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then fly, drive, walk, or crawl to buy The Law School Trip (the insider's guide to law school), a superb and highly entertaining parody of legal education.
     
     You'll grin from ear to ear at Professor Andrew McClurg's portrayal of the typical law school faculty. You'll howl with delight at his description of the "horribly evil" Bluebook and chortle with uncontrollable glee at his explanation of legal research and writing. Your funny bone will ache after reading his commentary on landmark cases, and you'll roll with laughter at his strategy for landing the perfect job. The Law School Trip is definitely a "must read"! What other book have you read lately that combines Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and William Rehnquist in the same paragraph?

     This is an amazing text and a must-have for all present and past law students. It is hard to find witty, creative humor anymore, but this text is full of it! Not only is the text hilarious, but also it is also extremely insightful. Written by a professor, the wit is mixed with concrete advice (humorously subtle). The "Trip" takes a journey from "Embarking on the Law School Trip" to "Post-Mortem: the Bar Exam and Other Things to Worry About." (It even touches on some of the most dreaded first-year cases.)
     
     There is no doubt that this creative and amusing masterpiece will be a classic. You will feel the need to share excerpts with friends, then they will borrow the book and never return it! Everyone needs a good laugh, and when it relates, the giggle is worth even more. Prepare for a plethora of hearty chuckles!

     This book should be required material for every first year law student, although they will appreciate it in an entirely different way when they've got a semester or two behind them. There was not a single page of this book that didn't make me laugh out loud. If you are thinking about going to law school (and who isn't?), a law school student, a lawyer, or someone who is related to a person in one of those categories, buy this book!
     
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