“It’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it’s the law”
–Sonia Sotomayor
Supreme Court Justice
Mastering Professional Responsibility
Grace M. Giesel
KF306 .G544 2009
From the Publisher: Mastering Professional Responsibility achieves the goal of the entire Mastering series by presenting a concise yet understandable explanation of the rules and concepts of lawyer professional responsibility. The author’s straightforward treatment of the subject makes the book easy to use and extraordinarily helpful in simplifying complex issues. This book is designed to be a secondary source for students enrolled in a law school professional responsibility course. The book discusses the rules and concepts covered in the typical professional responsibility course in a step-by-step manner, replete with simple examples in which the rules and concepts are applied. These are also the rules and concepts tested by the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam which is a requirement for admission for most states. Thus, the book is a good preparatory tool for that test as well as being an excellent aid for the law school course.
Law School 2.0: Legal Education for a Digital Age
David I.C. Thomson
K100 .T48 2009
From the Publisher: […] Since the MacCrate report in 1992, the internet has achieved massive growth, and a generation of students has grown up with sophisticated and pervasive use of technology in nearly every facet of their lives. This book describes how the perfect storm of generational change and the rising cost and criticisms of legal education, combined with extraordinary technological developments, will change the face of legal education as we know it today. Its scope extends from generational changes in our students, to pedagogical shifts inside and outside of the classroom, to hybrid textbooks, all the way to methods of active, interactive, and hypertextual learning. And it describes how this shift can — and will — better prepare law students for the practice of tomorrow.
Ethics and the Legal Profession
Edited by Elliot D. Cohen & Michael Davis
KF306 .E84 2009
From the Publisher: Beneficial for law or philosophy students, or practicing lawyers, Ethics and the Legal Profession includes articles by eminent philosophers and lawyers that explore moral problems in legal practice. The text is divided into six sections, each dealing with an important issue: The History and Organization of the Profession in the United States; The Moral Critique of Professionalism; The Adversary System; Conflict of Interest and Professional Judgment; Perjury and Confidentiality; and Making Legal Services Available. Combining in-depth case studies with careful analysis, the editors help students and professionals distinguish between moral and technical judgment, become clearer about the meaning of moral discourse in the workplace, and better appreciate the higher callings of their profession. Raising provocative questions about the rationale and limits of professional responsibility, this text provides insights into the ethics of the legal profession at a time when technology, globalization, and the changing economics of lawyering are reshaping the profession of law in ways still hard to predict.
The Five Types of Legal Argument
Wilson Huhn
KF380 .H84 2008
From the Publisher: The Five Types of Legal Argument succeeds both as a work of legal theory and as a practical guide to legal reasoning for law students, lawyers and judges. Huhn introduces each concept separately, and from many parts Huhn develops an intricate and nuanced theory of what law is. Huhn also shows readers how to identify, create, attack, and evaluate the five types of legal arguments (text, intent, precedent, tradition and policy) and how to weave the different types of arguments together to make them more persuasive. [. . .] In this edition Huhn introduces two additional ways of attacking legal arguments, and in a new chapter he utilizes principles of deductive logic to demonstrate the validity of the theory of the five types of legal arguments. The principal strength of this book is its clarity. The book is written in plain language that is easily understood both by lay persons and professionals, and it is organized simply and logically.
The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer”
Elizabeth Mertz
KF279 .M47 2007
From the Publisher: Anyone who has attended law school knows that it invokes an important intellectual transformation, frequently referred to as learning to think like a lawyer. This process, which forces students to think and talk in radically new and different ways about conflicts, is directed by professors in the course of their lectures and examinations, and conducted via spoken and written language. Beth Mertz’s book is the first study to truly delve into that language to reveal the complexities of how this process takes place. Mertz bases her linguistic study on tape recordings from first year Contracts courses in eight different law schools. She shows how all these schools employ the Socratic method between teacher and student, forcing the student to shift away from moral and emotional terms in thinking about conflict, toward frameworks of legal authority instead. This move away from moral frameworks is key, she says, arguing that it represents an underlying worldview at the core not just of law education, but for better or worse, of the entire US legal system which, while providing a useful source of legitimacy and a means to process conflict, fails to deal systematically with aspects of fairness and social justice. The latter part of her study shows how differences in race and gender makeup among law students and professors can subtly alter this process.
Preventive Law and Problem Solving: Lawyering for the Future
Thomas D. Barton
K212 .B377 2009
From the Publisher: […] The work traces the intricate connections among the risks and problems that people bring to law; the methods available to avoid those risks or redress those problems; the skills that lawyers employ to use those procedures effectively; the ethics with which lawyers and judges are expected to operate those procedures; the vision of truth that guides the system; and the broader human culture within which law, lawyers, and legal methods are shaped. Gradually, this system of mutually influencing parts is evolving a new paradigm for engaging legal problems. The book unravels the historic trends behind this movement, and suggests some of its many implications for judges, lawyers, and students. [This book] is designed for four audiences. First, it introduces a broad, socially connected understanding of legal systems and legal thinking for students who are considering, or just beginning, law study. Second, for those who have completed their first year of legal training, the book reflects on the assumptions that underpin the thinking and methods they have been struggling to master. Third, for those interested in legal theory, the book describes and explains a new paradigm for legal thought. Finally, practicing lawyers are offered examples of using the preventive/ problem solving approach in contract formation, project management, general business representation, domestic violence, and health care delivery.
ThomChat 