The Journey to Excellence in Legal Writing


Book Description

Professors Newell and Peterkin deal thoroughly with fundamental grammar skills often overlooked in legal writing textbooks. The chapters in this text cover everything that students should learn in legal writing from spotting issues, to finding and interpreting the law, to writing either an objective or persuasive document for their client or the court. Each chapter provides exhaustive treatment of the topic. The text also provides useful examples and exercises for the reader to test his or her understanding of the topic. The Journey to Excellence in Legal Writing not only contains a thorough explication of legal writing for first-year law students. Upper-level students, practitioners, and judges will also benefit from the instruction contained in these pages. Therefore, this book is the perfect tool for all who wish to learn and improve their legal writing skills.




Becoming a Legal Writer


Book Description




Illustrated Guide to Civil Procedure


Book Description

An Illustrated Guide to Civil Procedureis a student-friendly and problem-based introduction to how the federal rules operate in the context of a realistic age discrimination case. Students work with the Rules as the case carries them from client intake to trial, all the way to a resolution of the case. They shadow the attorneys and actively participate by making strategic and tactical decisions, and by reviewing and critiquing complaints, answers, motions, and discovery pleas. Truly an illustrated guide to Civil Procedure, this companion supplement is a great asset to all Civil Procedure courses, whether they begin with jurisdiction or the rules of pleading. New to the Fourth Edition: Updates reflecting all changes to the FRCP, including: Amendments that change the time periods within which most actions under the Rules need to be taken Provisions that address issues related to the discovery of electronic information Amendments concerning summary judgment and discovery related to expert witnesses Professors and students will benefit from: A book designed to be either used in-class as a required text or out-of-class as a useful reference Exploration of the procedural rules covered in a one or two-semester course Notes, questions, exercises, tactical and drafting tips, maps, and illustrations contribute to a dynamic learning environment Questions that Students are repeatedly assessed through questions requiring application of procedural rules to the hypothetical suit. Flexible organization that adapts to a variety of syllabi and comprehensive Teacher’s Manual Teaching materials include: Teacher’s Manual In addition to those questions contained in the Guide, the authors make available an extensive set of test questions, answers, and explanations that teachers can use throughout the semester.




The Introverted Lawyer


Book Description

While naturally loquacious law professors, law students, lawyers, and judges thrive in a world dominated by the Socratic question-and-answer method and rapid-fire oral discourse, quiet thinkers and writers can be sidelined. The introverted Lawyer illuminates the valuable gifts that introverted, shy, and socially anxious individuals bring to the legal profession-including active listening, deep thinking, empathy, impactful legal writing, creative problem-solving, and thoughtful communication. The first half of this book: (1) explains the differences among introversion, shyness, and social anxiety and how each can manifest in the legal context, (2) explores the impact on quiet individuals of the push toward extroversion in law school and law practice, and (3) highlights greatly valued proficiencies that quiet individuals offer the legal profession through nurturing instead of repressing innate strengths. Further, to help quiet law students and lawyers become authentically powerful advocates, the second half of this book outlines a practical seven-step process to empower introverted, shy, and socially anxious individuals to amplify their voices without compromising their quiet assets. With increased self-awareness and a holistic approach, and buoyed by collaboratively compassionate and motivating professors and law office mentors, introverted, shy, and socially anxious law students and lawyers will transform the legal profession. Book jacket.




Law and Leviathan


Book Description

From two legal luminaries, a highly original framework for restoring confidence in a government bureaucracy increasingly derided as “the deep state.” Is the modern administrative state illegitimate? Unconstitutional? Unaccountable? Dangerous? Intolerable? American public law has long been riven by a persistent, serious conflict, a kind of low-grade cold war, over these questions. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the administrative state can be redeemed, as long as public officials are constrained by what they call the morality of administrative law. Law and Leviathan elaborates a number of principles that underlie this moral regime. Officials who respect that morality never fail to make rules in the first place. They ensure transparency, so that people are made aware of the rules with which they must comply. They never abuse retroactivity, so that people can rely on current rules, which are not under constant threat of change. They make rules that are understandable and avoid issuing rules that contradict each other. These principles may seem simple, but they have a great deal of power. Already, without explicit enunciation, they limit the activities of administrative agencies every day. But we can aspire for better. In more robust form, these principles could address many of the concerns that have critics of the administrative state mourning what they see as the demise of the rule of law. The bureaucratic Leviathan may be an inescapable reality of complex modern democracies, but Sunstein and Vermeule show how we can at last make peace between those who accept its necessity and those who yearn for its downfall.




Assessing Competence in Professional Performance across Disciplines and Professions


Book Description

This book examines the challenges of cross-professional comparisons and proposes new forms of performance assessment to be used in professions education. It addresses how complex issues are learned and assessed across and within different disciplines and professions in order to move the process of “performance assessment for learning” to the next level. In order to be better equipped to cope with increasing complexity, change and diversity in professional education and performance assessment, administrators and educators will engage in crucial systems thinking. The main question discussed by the book is how the required competence in the performance of students can be assessed during their professional education at both undergraduate and graduate levels. To answer this question, the book identifies unresolved issues and clarifies conceptual elements for performance assessment. It reviews the development of constructs that cross disciplines and professions such as critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and problem solving. It discusses what it means to instruct and assess students within their own domain of study and across various roles in multiple contexts, but also what it means to instruct and assess students across domains of study in order to judge integration and transfer of learning outcomes. Finally, the book examines what it takes for administrators and educators to develop competence in assessment, such as reliably judging student work in relation to criteria from multiple sources. "... the co-editors of this volume, Marcia Mentkowski and Paul F. Wimmers, are associated with two institutions whose characters are so intimately associated with the insight that assessment must be integrated with curriculum and instructional program if it is to become a powerful influence on the educational process ..." Lee Shulman, Stanford University




Ethical Lawyering


Book Description

The purchase of this ebook edition does not entitle you to receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect. You will need to purchase a new print book to get access to the full experience, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Many professional responsibility professors struggle to engage students in a required course, one that students wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to take, covering material that simultaneously appears both obvious and intricately technical. Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned addresses those concerns with a fresh look at teaching and learning Professional Responsibility. Instead of containing impenetrable cases typical of most professional responsibility casebooks, which force students and teachers to sort out convoluted facts and incomplete or out-of-date analysis, this book “flips the classroom” by providing detailed explanations of the Model Rules, accompanied by problems for class discussion that require students to explore how the Rules apply in real-world situations—a structure which lends itself easily to both in-person and online courses. The book’s explanations are focused on building statutory interpretation skills, and then bringing these skills to common practice scenarios. Discussion covers all aspects of the law governing lawyers, from professional discipline to civil liability to court sanctions, as well as informal concerns, such as client relations and the business of law practice. Professors and students will benefit from: A “flipped classroom” structure in which the book provides detailed explanations of the Model Rules, interspersed with problems for class discussion, that are both drawn from practice and illustrate some of the challenges in applying the rules in real-world situations. MPRE-style multiple-choice review questions at the end of each chapter (or after substantial portions of a chapter) addressing the material. An informal, irreverent, down to earth, and conversational style, meant to be accessible, crafted to engage students without understating the seriousness of the subject matter, and to encourage them to put themselves into the “hot seats” that the problems describe. A statutory construction approach to the Model Rules, designed to build text-interpretation skills. A comprehensive treatment of the law regulating lawyers, considering all of the practical hazards that lawyers face, and illustrating the connections between the Model Rules as a basis for professional discipline and the law of torts (fiduciary duty and malpractice), contracts (scope of the attorney-client relationship and engagement agreements), agency (authority), and procedure (sanctions), as well as informal concerns such as client relations and reputational issues. A digital edition that includes links to all necessary statutory materials. Teaching materials Include: A detailed Teacher’s Manual, including: Suggested syllabi for two-hour and three-hour courses. Detailed analyses of all of the problems, including pedagogical suggestions, to stimulate class discussion. Explanatory answers to the MPRE-style multiple-choice review questions. Suggested PowerPoints for class use. Two online-only chapters (The Government Lawyer; Judicial Ethics).




History of the Common Law


Book Description

This introductory text explores the historical origins of the main legal institutions that came to characterize the Anglo-American legal tradition, and to distinguish it from European legal systems. The book contains both text and extracts from historical sources and literature. The book is published in color, and contains over 250 illustrations, many in color, including medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings, books and manuscripts, caricatures, and photographs.




Sunny


Book Description

Sunny tries to shine despite his troubled past in this third novel in the critically acclaimed Track series from National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds. Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds, with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could take them to the state championships. They all have a lot to lose, but they all have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Sunny is the main character in this novel, the third of four books in Jason Reynold’s electrifying middle grade series. Sunny is just that—sunny. Always ready with a goofy smile and something nice to say, Sunny is the chillest dude on the Defenders team. But his life hasn’t always been sun beamy-bright. You see, Sunny is a murderer. Or at least he thinks of himself that way. His mother died giving birth to him, and based on how Sunny’s dad treats him—ignoring him, making Sunny call him Darryl, never “Dad”—it’s no wonder Sunny thinks he’s to blame. It seems the only thing Sunny can do right in his dad’s eyes is win first place ribbons running the mile, just like his mom did. But Sunny doesn’t like running, never has. So he stops. Right in the middle of a race. With his relationship with his dad now worse than ever, the last thing Sunny wants to do is leave the other newbies—his only friends—behind. But you can’t be on a track team and not run. So Coach asks Sunny what he wants to do. Sunny’s answer? Dance. Yes, dance. But you also can’t be on a track team and dance. Then, in a stroke of genius only Jason Reynolds can conceive, Sunny discovers a track event that encompasses the hard beats of hip-hop, the precision of ballet, and the showmanship of dance as a whole: the discus throw. But as he practices for this new event, can he let go of everything that’s been eating him up inside?




I Heard My Country Calling


Book Description

In this extraordinary memoir, James Webb writes vividly about the early years that shaped his remarkable personal journey. It is rare in America that one individual is recognized for the highest levels of combat valor, as a respected member of the literary and journalistic world, and as a blunt-spoken leader in national politics. Webb's account of his childhood is a tremendous American saga as the family endures the constant moves and challenges of the rarely examined post-World War II military. Webb also tells of his four years at Annapolis in a voice that is painfully honest yet ultimately triumphant. His description of Vietnam's most brutal battlefields breaks new literary ground. One of the most highly decorated combat Marines of that war, he is a respected expert on the history and conduct of the war. Webb's novelist's eyes and ears invest this work with remarkable power. He also describes his election to the Senate, where he was a respected leader on issues of national defense, foreign policy, and economic fairness. This is a life that could happen only in America. -- Back cover.