Fortunately, the ability to read law well (quickly and accurately) is a skill that can be acquired through knowledge and practice. The sooner the student masters these skills, the greater the rewards. Using seven specific reading strategies, reinforced with hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter, this book shows students how they can read law efficiently, effectively, powerfully, and confidently. Reading Like a Lawyer is divided into 3 parts: * Part I introduces the reader to the fundamentals of legal reasoning upon which law-based reading builds; * Part II introduces the reader to concrete strategies for reading effectively in law school; * and Part III teaches strategies for reading law outside of the law school context.

    Topics covered include law review articles and student notes, seminar term papers, how to shift from research to writing, cite-checking others' work, publishing, and publicizing written works. With supporting documents available on http://volokh.com/writing, the book helps law students and everyone else involved in academic legal writing: professors save time and effort communicating basic points to students; law schools satisfy the American Bar Association's second- and third-year writing requirements; and law reviews receive better notes from their staff.

    The closest thing he had to a job was eating his parents’ food, sitting on his parents’ couch, and watching The Price is Right. An amateur magician, he spent the rest of his time practicing card tricks and rope tricks. And though he could tie four different slipknots, the necktie posed some difficulties.Rick’s father, a successful Michigan attorney, told Rick it was time to move out and enter the real world. Rick certainly wasn’t going to get a job, so he went to law school instead.This is the story of Rick’s journey from childhood to lawyerhood.In Lawyer Boy, Rick uses the skills he developed as a magician to succeed in class, and learns how to become a lawyer without becoming his father. His journey through law school was exhausting, exciting, and infuriating, and, the way he tells it, so funny it’s criminal.

    It is authoritative, current, highly readable, and widely used at law schools throughout the nation. Coverage focuses on the basic elements of, and defenses to, specific crimes, such as homicide, rape, and theft, as well as group criminality and inchoate liability. The common law is emphasized, with extensive comparisons to the Model Penal Code and thoughtful examination of the underpinnings of the utilitarian philosophies of substantive criminal law. The text encourages students to consider the approach these philosophies would take to a particular matter under discussion, thus providing an excellent learning tool for gaining a firm understanding of how our criminal justice system works.

    NOTES ABOUT To Kill a MockingbirdNOT the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    

    Unlike most style or grammar guides, it focuses on the special needs of legal writers, answering a wide spectrum of questions about grammar and style both rules as well as exceptions. The Redbook also gives detailed, authoritative advice on punctuation, capitalization, spelling, footnotes, and citations, with illustrations in legal context. Designed for law students, law professors, practicing lawyers and judges, the work emphasizes the ways in which legal writing differs from other styles of technical writing. The "how-to" sections deal with editing and proofreading, numbers and symbols, and overall document design.

    This book introduces the basic elements of contracts; describes the lawyer's role in the drafting and negotiating process; discusses amendments, waivers, and consents; and, addresses issues that arise in reviewing contracts, including due diligence issues.

    Tribe.

    Satan's Advice to Young Lawyers is a pithy guide to rising from lowly first-year associate to renowned leader of the legal community.Inside the pages of this remarkable book, Satan offers his profound counsel on topics as diverse as choosing evil as a path to power, the billable hour, how to steal clients from your law firm, fashion, and more.Do not let your competition have these secrets for themselves. Get the book now.This profound guidebook makes a great gift for your favorite law student, bar exam taker, bar exam passer or new lawyer.

    The truth is, I've lived three very different lives: the one before prison; the one in prison; and my life since then. It has taken years to make sense of it all, but now I've found a voice to speak about it.Paddy Armstrong was one of four people falsely convicted of The Guildford Bombing in 1975. He spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.Today, as a husband and father, life is wonderfully ordinary, but the memory of his ordeal lives on. Here, for the first time and with unflinching candour, he lays bare the experiences of those years and their aftermath.Life after Life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness. It reminds us of the privilege of freedom, and how the balm of love, family and everyday life can restore us and mend the scars of even the most savage injustice.'This book captures the sweet soul of Paddy. Beautifully written. For lovers of freedom everywhere.' Jim Sheridan

    This new edition deals with recent significant events—such as the fall of the Soviet empire and the resulting precipitous decline of the socialist legal tradition—and their significance for the civil law tradition. The book also incorporates the findings of recent important literature on the legal cultures of civil law countries.

    This comprehensive text presents a wide range of excerpts and opinions from the most significant Supreme Court cases and provides the contextual material students need to interpret their historical significance. The Sixth Edition adds material on dozens of important recent cases, current through June 2004, and features carefully updated and refined pedagogy.Author Biography: David M. O'Brien is Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he teaches the popular constitutional law course on which his book Constitutional Law and Politics (now in its Sixth Edition) is based. Professor O'Brien is a regular commentator on the Supreme Court's activities and rulings. He is the author of over fifteen books and regularly contributes op-ed pieces on the Court to the Los Angeles Times.

    Criminal law is considered by many to be the most exciting of the legal specialties, and here the authors turn to the type of dramatic crimes and trials that have so captivated the public -- becoming fodder for countless television shows and legal thrillers. But the eight cases in this collection have also set historical precedents and illuminated underlying principles of the American criminal justice system. Future president John Adams makes clear that even the most despised and vilified criminal is entitled to a legal defense in the argument he delivers on behalf of the British soldiers who shot and killed five Americans during the Boston Massacre. The always-controversial temporary-insanity defense makes its debut within sight of the White House when, in front of horrified onlookers, a prominent congressman guns down the district attorney over an extramarital affair. Clarence Darrow provides a ringing defense of a black family charged with using deadly force to defend themselves from a violent mob -- an argument that refines the concept of self-defense and its applicability to all races. The treason trial of Aaron Burr, accused of plotting to steal the western territories of the United States and form a new country with himself as its head, offers a fascinating glimpse into a rare type of prosecution, as well as a look at one of the most interesting traitors in the nation's history. Perhaps the best-known case inthe book is that of Ernesto Miranda, the accused rapist whose trial led to the Supreme Court decision requiring police to advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present -- their Miranda rights. Each of the eight cases presented here is given legal and cultural context, including a brief historical introduction, a biographical sketch of the attorneys involved, highlights of trial testimony, analysis of the closing arguments, and a summary of the trial's impact on its participants and our country. In clear, jargon-free prose, Michael S Lief and H. Mitchell Caldwell make these pivotal cases come to vibrant life for every reader.

    It’s the judges who have the heavy lift: they are the ones who have to make the ultimate decisions, many of which have profound consequences on the lives of the people standing in front of them.In Tough Cases, judges from different kinds of courts in different parts of the country write about the case that proved most difficult for them to decide. Some of these cases received international attention: the Elián González case in which Judge Jennifer Bailey had to decide whether to return a seven-year-old boy to his father in Cuba after his mother drowned trying to bring the child to the United States, or the Terri Schiavo case in which Judge George Greer had to decide whether to withdraw life support from a woman in a vegetative state over the wishes of her parents, or the Scooter Libby case about appropriate consequences for revealing the name of a CIA agent. Others are less well-known but equally fascinating: a judge on a Native American court trying to balance U.S. law with tribal law, a young Korean American former defense attorney struggling to adapt to her new responsibilities on the other side of the bench, and the difficult decisions faced by a judge tasked with assessing the mental health of a woman who has killed her own children.Relatively few judges have publicly shared the thought processes behind their decision making. Tough Cases makes for fascinating reading for everyone from armchair attorneys and fans of Law and Order to those actively involved in the legal profession who want insight into the people judging their work.