I had to read tons of books in Spanish and English to obtain my degree at U.B as a software engineer, and I know it is very demanding for lawyers and accountants. In the first year at U.B. it is true that most of students can pass an exam reading notes (more students = more $), but lecturers will recommend you to read many books. Once you are in the second year, if you have not read books before you will not pass your exams. This basically means that if you approve the first year reading notes, then you will pay the consequences and you will never get a degree there. I agree there are many weaknesses that are important but I do not buy the story that average graduates at U.B.A. have read more than graduates at U.B. I think it is more likely to obtain a degree at U.B.A. reading notes. I bet it is like this now, because I have gone to secondary school with people who became lawyers and I know them.
UB is a like highschool.
UBA is huge. I mean, you can have over 70 courses on one subject. Depends. There are 30.000 law students. About 1000 finish per year.
So, if you do research you can find the easiest or the most difficult class. That's up to you.
When i did criminal law (a 1 year class) they gave us 50.000 pages mandatory reading. While I was teaching in a semester course we used to give about 15.000.
At law you have manuals or tratados. A manual is a resume, a basic book of about 500 pages. A tratado is a collection of no less than 5 books of 1000 pages. When I did civil law I studied from 3 different tratados, about 15.000 pages.
When they hired me at Luis Moreno Ocampo Law Firm (
http://en.wikipedia....s_Moren
campo) it was to do again the work of somebody from UB who did it wrong. And I suppoused to do it undercover because he had a rich daddy who used to pay an expensive annual contract with the law firm, but his condition was to hire his useless son.
One time he asked me about criminal law books, so, naive me, I started recommending him some readings because he was soooooo ignorant. Then he clarified that he wasn t planning to read it, he just wanted to have a beautiful library at hus future law firm...My library is mainly on the floor around my desk and my books are all written with a pen, because I read them and I use them. Books are tools.
While I was competing for highend jobs, there were only students and lawyers from UBA, most of them former Nacional Buenos Aires highschool that belongs to UBA.
This is my personal experience.