This updated casebook serves a course in introduction to legal reasoning. It is designed to initiate students in the legal methods of case law analysis and statutory interpretation. In a course of this kind, students should acquire or refine the techniques of close reading, analogizing, distinguishing, positing related fact patterns, and criticizing judicial and legislative exposition and logic. Law students' introduction to law can be unsettling: the sink or swim approach favored by many schools casts students adrift in a sea of substantive rules, forms and methods. By contrast, the Legal Methods course seeks to acquaint students with their new rhetorical and logical surroundings before, or together with, the students' first encounters with the substance of contracts, torts, or other first year courses. This approach may not only be user friendly; it should also prompt students to take a critical distance from the wielding of the methods. In this way, students may avoid (or at least broaden) the tunnel vision that so often afflicts beginning law students. The fifth edition features a substantially revised chapter on statutory interpretation. It not only highlights recent Supreme Court decisions, but also confronts students with statutory texts to construe independently of judicial exposition. The chapter also includes new sections on ordinary meaning, the use of dictionaries and corpus linguistics, and temporal problems in statutory interpretation.

This popular paralegal-specific text introduces the skills of reading and analyzing court opinions. It focuses on briefing cases and applying case law in legal memoranda and advocacy letters. This is a major revision with new cases and expanded writing chapters. ALSO AVAILABLE INSTRUCTOR SUPPLEMENTS CALL CUSTOMER SUPPORT TO ORDER Instructors Manual, ISBN: 0-314-46555-3

This book examines the roles played by narrative and culture in the construction of legal cases and their resolution. It is articulated in two parts. Part I recalls epistemological turns in legal thinking as it moves from theory to practice in order to show how facts are constructed within the legal process. By combining interdisciplinary paradigms and methods, the work analyses the evolution of facts from their expression by the client to their translation within the lawyer-client relationship and the subsequent decision of the judge, focusing on the dynamic activity of narrative construction among the key actors: client, lawyer and judge. Part II expands the scientific framework toward a law-and-culture-oriented perspective, illustrating how legal stories come about in the fabric of the authentic dimensions of everyday life. The book stresses the capacity of laypeople, who in this activity are equated with clients, to shape the law, dealing not just with formal rules, but also with implicit or customary rules, in given contexts. By including the illustration of cases concerning vulnerable clients, it lays the foundations for developing a socio-clinical research programme, whose aims including enabling lay and expert actors to meet for the purposes of improving forms of collective narrations and generating more just legal systems.

Cracking the Case Method is a concise and down-to-earth guide to the intellectual content of law school instruction, particularly in the first year. Readers will discover why and how law school instructors use appellate court cases as vehicles for teaching legal analysis. This book explains that legal analysis is a process by which judges and lawyers use argument (or rhetoric) to connect stories to legal conclusions, and reveals how to read judges' appellate court opinions as arguments rather than merely as sources of rules. To succeed in law school, students have to apply analytical skills to novel stories by crafting arguments of their own, both in class meetings and when answering final examination essay questions. This book promotes readers' ability to apply analytical skills by: Demonstrating how to "brief" cases in a way that captures both arguments and rules; Explaining and illustrating common types of arguments; Using actual law school classroom dialogues annotated by the authors to explain how instructors use classes to further law schools' goal of teaching argument skills; Setting forth effective final examination preparation strategies and techniques for crafting answers that demonstrate analytical skills; and Illustrating final exam strategies and techniques by providing actual law school final examination questions followed by model answers annotated by the authors. The subjects that readers will study in law school (whether rules of contracts or processes such as jury trials) all emanate from the Common Law Tradition. To further enhance readers' analytical understanding and skills, the book concludes with a chapter that provides a brief and colorful overview of this rich and fascinating tradition. The chapter includes comparisons to the common law tradition's Civil Law counterparts, enhancing the book's value to all readers.. If you want to achieve academic success in law school, this book provides you with the tools you need to Crack the Case Method. Reviews: "Law school study fundamentally differs from university study. Most first year law students therefore find the transition from college to law school difficult and bumpy. This book explains the differences and gives a thorough guide to what it takes to do well in law school, especially during that crucial first year. Students who want a significant edge over their classmates will read it before the first day of 1L. I wish I had." Alex Kozinski Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit "The Authors provide an accessible and often humorous guide to the Case Method. In addition to demystifying legal studies for the new student, the book provides a sound foundation for the future practitioner; the object of the Case Method, in the main, is to allow the application of legal principles to help clients resolve their problems." Hector G. Gallegos Partner and Head of Morrison & Foerster LLP's Los Angeles Litigation Department "Legal education and the legal profession are in the midst of a profound restructuring brought on by a revolution in technology and dramatic changes in the economy. In the midst of such change, Cracking the Case Method is a critically important work that will help all law students develop a lawyer's most important tool - using the venerable case method to carry out legal analysis and to hone their analytical skills - the essence of every lawyer's work. Cracking the Case Method is not an abstract academic exercise, but a nuts and bolts, how to approach to analysis that will train better lawyers and promote just results in our judicial system. The case method may be over 100 years old but how to use it as an effective tool for good lawyering has never been done like it is in these pages." Jeffrey S. Brand Dean and Professor of Law University of San Francisco School of Law"

Ginsburg's casebook provides detailed information on legal methods and the tools for fast, easy, on-point research. Part of the University Casebook Series®, it includes selected cases designed to illustrate the development of a body of law on a particular subject. Text and explanatory materials designed for law study accompany the cases.

Preparing for Practice is a fresh approach to the 1L first semester legal writing and research course, designed to guide students through their development of the essential skills needed to master the MPT section of the bar exam and learn legal analysis and writing from a practice perspective. The coursebook combines practice-oriented case files with theoretical content, eliminating the need for professors to create their own case files.