In Anarchy and Elegance Chris Goodrich deconstructs the inner workings of legal education at the nation's most prestigious law school. A former legal reporter, Goodrich - a Yale graduate - attended the law school on a year-long fellowship for journalists, and soon found himself in a mare's nest of conflicting ideas, emotions, and social visions. His class-by-class account, which showed exactly how law students learn to "think like lawyers," highlights the tension between the often-elegant abstractions of law and the messy, anarchic specifics of "real life." (Edmund Burke's alleged view: "Law sharpens the mind by narrowing it.") His initial skepticism about the law's tendency to operate in a self-referential, we-know-best manner is slowly tempered by admiration for its rigorous methods and theoretical good-faith, and results in a book that proves as entertaining as it is informative.