Law related book recommendations?

I'd recommend reading the FT, or other finance/business related books (assuming you are looking to get into biglaw).

There's a lot of books. It's better reading about a specific area of law you are interested in studying. Do you have any favourite areas of academic law?

honestly not really as im doing my A-levels i have very limited knowledge about law, although i know i want to work in "biglaw" magic circle firms etc. could you recommend me any books that are known or would give valuable info to include in my personal statement

I'm doing A levels too and I do too but you will get to learn more after reading and researching. Why do you want to do a law degree, assuming you want to do it since you said you wanted to include books in your personal statement? Wdym valuable info?

yes, I plan on going into "biglaw". wouldn't referencing the financial times be a bit odd, i meant more like actual books that you would buy from a book store lol

to be honest money. and i just mean books that i can reference and show both an interest and understanding of law so they are more likely to make me an offer

honestly not really as im doing my A-levels i have very limited knowledge about law, although i know i want to work in "biglaw" magic circle firms etc. could you recommend me any books that are known or would give valuable info to include in my personal statement

to be honest money. and i just mean books that i can reference and show both an interest and understanding of law so they are more likely to make me an offer

I don't think you should be reading books to 'reference' in interviews or personal statements. It doesn't really come across as genuine that way. The reading should be broader and 'inform' your worldview and consequently how you write your application or personal statements. Law books are thus quite useless in that regard. General business / finance books may be helpful - I quite like Ray Dalio's Principles, and his general advice/principles is something you can reference without sounding pretentious.

Referencing the FT isn't odd, odds are that the person reading/interviewing is more likely to be familiar with what you are trying to say. In fact, there are a number of interview/application questions asking you to talk about a recent news article. Reading the FT or general financial/business news generally is very helpful - for instance, being able to talk about how COVID may affect certain contracts, or how the UK leaving the EU may affect cross-border insolvency law or even how economic drivers shape a business' strategy is how you can engage an interviewer - these are issues that often crop up on our intranet pages or get blasted to us by email. There was even a very interesting article about Kirkland's business model a couple months ago on FT which is very relevant to the usual questions about law firm strategy.

As an aside, you do very little 'hard law' as a practising lawyer, so citing from Chitty on Contracts is more likely to lose your interviewer than impress him.

looooool

You dont need a law degree to be a lawyer but it makes it easier if you want to be a barrister. Practising law is different from studying law. To be competitive in the legal sector at a basic standard, you need high grades for your degree. Since you will be doing this degree for 3 years, you should really research if a law degree is for you because it's not worth it if you arent interested in and it will be harder to motivate yourself in getting the high grades for it at least. A law degree is great but the work requires hard work and effort. There are other jobs that can give lots of money like a doctor, which is more stable as the legal sector is saturated, but these jobs require commitment so you need to research if its worth doing so.

A personal statement needs to be personal to you - you need to show your interest of law from your own initiative. They wont give you an offer for mentioning a certain book or information. They will give you an offer based on multiple factors: your A levels, GCSEs (only a few are strict about it), any additional tests (CLT and LNAT), interview (if any) and personal statement. For the personal statement, the best way you'll be competitive is showing an actual genuine interest in law through what you've done so far to explore law as an academic subject and how you are a suitable candidate. I can recommend you some books but they wont do anything unless you can make it relevant to why you got interested to academic law and understand how it helped you specifically for the course - big emphasis on you. You can do other things to show your interest, which I will happily recommend, but you need to talk how it helped in your application process.

which activities would you recommend? my Gcses are very subpar compared to my A-levels so i certainly need a personal statement that stands out

You think people don't go into corporate law specifically for money?

I don't disagree that most people do law for money but I found it funny. Plus, the optimist in me wants to believe that they still have some kind of INTEREST in law.

Wider reading, reading cases, a research project, moocs, epq, essay comps, podcasts, lectures, taster days, summer schools - there's so much you can do honestly. What gcses did you get? What unis are you wanting to apply to? You dont need to stand out tho

5 Cs..... although i did 0 revision and had 12% attendance without any care as to what I achieved, in A-level I have genuinely tried and got my priorities straight and my predictions are currently A*AA hoping for A*A*A