Thursday, July 23, 2020
Second Expanded Edition of Think Like A Lawyer: Legal Reasoning for Law Students and Business Professionals
I have just issued the second expanded edition of my book Think Like A Lawyer: Legal Reasoning for Law Students and Business Professionals. Because I am self-publishing this version, I have cut the price from $59.95 to $35.00.
This book helps law students and lawyers develop their legal reasoning and problem-solving skills through self-correcting exercises. This type of self-guided active learning is especially important now when so much of the fall semester will be taught on line.
"This book’s purpose is to better prepare law students and lawyers for the practice of law by providing them with a firm foundation in legal reasoning, showing them how to apply legal reasoning skills to facts, and teaching them legal problem solving. I will do this by focusing explicitly on the different types of legal reasoning and the types of miniskills needed to develop the different types of legal reasoning.
The chapters in this book will present the different types of legal reasoning, the miniskills that are related to the different types of legal reasoning, and how to use these miniskills in combination. Chapter One discusses the five types of legal reasoning. Chapter Two will teach you how to be a critical and engaged reader and analyze cases, skills that are needed before you can learn the other miniskills in detail. Chapter Three concerns reasoning by analogy, which involves showing how your case is like a precedent case. Chapter Four examines rule-based reasoning, and how to apply rules to facts. Chapter Five involves synthesizing cases into rules, which is an important skill in establishing the law. Chapter Six investigates statutory interpretation. Chapter Seven brings the prior chapters together, by demonstrating how the different types of legal reasoning relate to the small-scale paradigm (how to organize a simple analysis). Chapter Eight fills in this paradigm by examining how to respond to opposing arguments and distinguish cases. Finally, Chapter Nine serves as a capstone to this book with its presentation of advanced problem solving and creative thinking. The appendices cover how the American legal system developed and canons of statutory construction.One of the purposes of this book is to allow law students to learn legal skills independently. I want students to be able to get immediate feedback on their learning. Consequently, I have put answers to the exercises at the end of each chapter."
(Scott Fruehwald)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_skills/2020/07/second-expanded-edition-of-think-like-a-lawyer-legal-reasoning-for-law-students-and-business-profess.html