Palm Desert Attorney

Writing and Analysis in the Law (University Casebooks)

Description

A standard-setter in American legal education, Writing and Analysis in the Law provides a guide to legal writing, focusing on the importance of clear organization in written and oral communications. Developed as a textbook for a first-year law school course, the book introduces law students to the principles of research, including analyzing legal authority in cases and statues. It discusses the structure and persuasive techniques of effective appellate argument, both in briefs and in oral presentation, and makes extensive use of illustrative examples and writing exercises, on topics such as memorandums, trial briefs, and oral presentations. Lucid, compact, and up-to-date, this work consistently draws acclaim in law schools across the country. Highlights of the fourth edition include new chapters on interviewing a client, counseling a client, and analyzing questions of law.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-07-29
Summary: "Bosox"

IMPORTANT NOTICE: FIREARMS MAY BE USED TO TAKE ALLIGATORS ONLY ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. IT IS UNLAWFUL TO TAKE AN ALLIGATOR BY MEANS OF FIREARMS.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2008-09-30
Summary: "Great refresher and reference"

After reading the other reviews, I felt it was necessary to add my thoughts to the list. I found out about this book a few months ago while talking to a rising 1L about his legal writing course. As a looked through it, I realized that the format of this book would be a great tool for me to edit my writing samples for prospective employers. Most of the advice in this book about techniques and strategy is great, at least for the way I learn. I made an outline of some of the chapters for myself, including the authors' guidelines and underlying reason for why those techniques and strategies work. (I know, it's like a class outline.)

This is the kind of guidance I find helpful. Our class used the Neumann book. Some people love the Neumann book, but it's not the best learning tool for me. Everyone learns differently. All I know is if I can't learn from it, it's of no value to me. The lack of examples is a legitimate point. I was lucky to have a legal writing professor who supplied us with copies of his own briefs for us to study. So, that was not much of a problem for me. In the end, Writing and Analysis in the Law is the legal writing guide I wish I had read the summer before law school and during the first year.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2008-09-21
Summary: "Good book for Legal Drafting"

This is a good writing instruction for 1L J.D.. In my school, it is used as textbook.

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Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2007-11-13
Summary: "Ineffective and Wordy"

Shapo covers all the technical elements of writing a legal memo and brief, and offers appendices with helpful samples of each. The intro/first chapter gives a very nice introduction to the structure of the US Court system, which I found very helpful as a first-year (1L) law student.

But it's all downhill from there. Shapo tries to describe how to construct the different parts of legal memos and briefs, but the given examples are sparse and often imperfect.

This book would be much more effective if it spent less time describing how to write a good document and more time showing examples of well-written briefs and memos.

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Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2007-10-06
Summary: "Choose a different book"

It's okay but most of the chapters are useless, unless you start reading it before you start law school. It's very elementary and the things I was really hoping for help on, it just didn't get me very far. The most useful part is it does have examples of well-written memos and briefs in the back of it and they were helpful but there's only a few.