This book is designed to provide guidance to the law student or litigator as to the applicable rules--and the inter-relationship among those rules--for all of the stages of a federal civil lawsuit. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are not sufficiently organized or cross-referenced to allow law students or litigators to easily understand the relationships among the rules, or to make sure that all relevant rules have been consulted. Litigating in Federal Court seeks to remedy this deficiency. Litigating in Federal Court is divided into two parts. The first part of the book covers all of the stages of federal court litigation, including a short narrative discussion of each stage and one or more charts showing the applicable rules and their relationship to each other. These charts have been drafted and re-drafted over a period of years in order to best represent the knowledge of litigation that Professor Woodley has acquired in the process of learning, teaching, and using the litigation process. The second part of the book contains multiple checklists for drafting most of the documents used in the pretrial process (which include citations of the basic relevant rules). This extremely practical yet analytically complex guide to federal court litigation will prove to be a valuable resource for law students and litigators alike.

This book examines statutes governing actions against the federal government, such as the Tucker Act and the Federal Tort Claims Act. The expansion of attorneys' fees recovery against the U.S. made possible by the 1980 Equal Access to Justice Act is treated in detail, as are the changes in contract dispute resolution contained in the Contract Disputes Act of 1978.