One L, in many of its scenes, is highly reminiscent of the 1973 movie The Paper Chase (based on John Jay Osborn, Jr.'s 1971 novel), also set in the Harvard Law School. Both reveal the perpetual drive to receive good grades and both feature a demanding, autocratic professor, in The Paper Chase, Charles Kingsfield and in One L, Rudolph Perrini. Yet, in the larger sense, One L is a classic initiation story, a bildungsroman, in which the young man is educated into a new way of life.

Turow writes, "In baseball it's the rookie year. In the navy it is boot camp. In many walks of life there is a similar time of trial and initiation, a period when newcomers are forced to be victims of their own ineptness and when they must somehow master the basic skills of the profession in order to survive." Like Charles...