Updates and Comments:
This is my updates and comments section. The law is always changing.
Not too long ago, law school placement was determined more by where you were in the class than by which school you went to. As a result, guys in the bottom half of Yale had placement worse than the top 10% of many bottom 25% law schools. The demographics and statistics suggested that most students were better off in a law school a tier or two below the best that they could be accepted into.
I saw this happen a number of times. For example, I had a friend who couldn't quite get into BYU's law school (which has a large number of pros and cons -- the students are too competitive for the school's ranking, which means you work harder than you should have to for what you get). He got into another school where he stood out and thrived, eventually ending up on the faculty -- something that would never have happened at BYU.
The interesting thing about this model of placement is that it was so different from the model that applies to business schools. In a business school (MBA programs, to be specific), class standing is important, but the quality of the school is more important than where a person graduates in the class. It is better to be the Anchor at Harvard than to be #1 at MSU (which MSU? -- there are at least five -- I'm not saying. I used MSU because there are at least five of them ...).
In law school, that is beginning to happen. It is suddenly better to be in the bottom half at Berkeley than in the top 20% at Tulane (to give an example a correspondent gave me for himself and a close friend who went to the same undergraduate school, got the same grades, had very close LSAT scores, and went to different Law Schools). Tulane makes a good example because it is a good school.
Some of the bottom tier (bottom 10% or bottom 25%, depending how you cut it) schools are finding that even their law review students can't get jobs. Several of these schools actually produce excellent students with good bar passage rates. It doesn't seem to matter.
Recruiters still want "top 25% students from top 25 schools" (btw, the "top 25" list of schools has about 40 to 50 schools in it). And, for the second tier, class placement is still critical (in fact, I now define a second tier school as one where a large firm won't interview you if you aren't in the top 25% of your class. A third tier school is one where large firms only interview law review students and a bottom tier is one where being on law review won't get you an interview with an a.v. rated firm).
Gilberts and Nutshells are two sets of study aids. They are the same, more or less, for every state. Check Amazon Books if you can't find them in your local area. Amazon discounts stuff pretty solidly (30% or so) and they charge the actual cost of mailing (usually $3.00 priority mail) and no sales tax, so they are probably the best place to buy them anyways.
If you want to start practicing authoring and writing web pages, the best, and completely free tool is AOLPress. You can download the documentation, program, templates and more from http://www.aolpress.com. I like the beta, with some reservations on the current build. (My blunt comments on the beta have a page of their own). If you are in law school or getting ready to start law school, download a copy of AOLPress and just play with it for a while. The free copies really are free (they don't expire) and are completely functional (AOL doesn't sell a "better" or "professional" version).
I've also started hosting web pages at $25.00 a year. *If* you are interested in mediation and alternative dispute resolution, feel free to take a look at the program I am involved with -- ADR Resources.
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