The Legal Writing Handbook: Research, Analysis, and Writing

By Anne EnquistLaurel Currie OatesKelly Kunsch, et al.

Book Overview

Buy anew versionof this Connected Casebook and receiveaccessto theonline e-book, practice questionsfrom your favorite study aids, and anoutline toolon CasebookConnect, the all in one learning solution for law school students. CasebookConnect offers you what you need most to be successful in your law school classes - portability, meaningful feedback, and greater efficiency. The Legal Writing Handbook: Analysis, Research, and Writing continues in the tradition that has made it a resounding success and a leading text for almost two decades, offering a complete teaching package with everything a student needs for the legal writing course. Features: Updated with the goal of making students practice ready. New chapter on writing e-memos, that is, shorter, less formal memos that might be embedded in an email. Exercises added to the research chapters Expanded chapter on letters that discusses both opinion letters and demand letters. CasebookConnectfeatures: ONLINE E-BOOK Law school comes with a lot of reading, so access your enhanced e-book anytime, anywhere to keep up with your coursework. Highlight, take notes in the margins, and search the full text to quickly find coverage of legal topics. PRACTICE QUESTIONS Quiz yourself before class and prep for your exam in the Study Center. Practice questions from Examples & Explanations , Emanuel Law Outlines , Emanuel Law in a Flash flashcards, and other best-selling study aid series help you study for exams while tracking your strengths and weaknesses to help optimize your study time. OUTLINE TOOL Most professors will tell you that starting your outline early is key to being successful in your law school classes. The Outline Tool automatically populates your notes and highlights from the e-book into an editable format to accelerate your outline creation and increase study time later in the semester.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1454841559
• ISBN13: 9781454841555
• Release Date: February 2014
• Publisher: Aspen Publishers
• Length: 948 Pages
• Weight: 3.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

An Immense Help to Any Lawyer and Law Student!

Oates, Enquist, and Kunsch have published the third edition of The Legal Writing Handbook, one of the most comprehensive legal writing books available today. This book speaks powerfully about the entire legal writing process. There is a definite art and science to crafting legal documents and this book provides the detailed instruction necessary for legal professionals and law students to produce truly outstanding work. Readers are briefly introduced to the American legal system in terms of government and court history, responsibilities, accountability, and the nature of both common and enacted laws. Then comes the real meat - performing legal research and analysis, making use of available printed and online resources, learning sound legal grammar, and instruction for crafting a variety of professional legal documents that lawyers write most often - legal advice memos, client letters, motion briefs, and appellate briefs. The book is very helpful in terms of crafting legal documents. Readers will quickly pick up on how to select the right words and how to effectively structure their thoughts. Like the work of a sculptor or clay modeler, legal documents should be crafted in such a way as to convey the right message to the right people. Through a variety of gripping written examples the reader will learn just how important it is to devote quality time and to give serious thought to the legal writing process. The book reveals in no uncertain terms that there are definite strategies involved in crafting legal documents. Whether one is an attorney for a plaintiff or defendant, a law enforcement officer, or prosecutor, the outcome of court cases can hinge on one's writing skills. One revelation from the book that will hit readers hard is that clever legal document writers can act unethically by crafting their legal documents in such a way as to distort the truth to get guilty people off. Likewise, there is the possibility of trying to convict totally innocent people. An innocent person can be made to appear quite guilty of a crime by cleverly crafting such documents. Certain facts can be emphasized or de-emphasized, mis-truths can be implied through the clever use of wording and structuring, and so on, to cast particular people in poor light. Readers will find utterly amazing - and perhaps a bit frightening - how opposing parties can take the same set of facts and circumstances and craft two entirely different perspectives involving the same case matter! Readers are also introduced to the many types of helpful and essential legal research resources available to them - online court decisions and statues, online information brokering services, law dictionaries and encyclopedias, law reviews, and general practice books - all of which will greatly contribute to the legal writing process. This book will be of immense help to any lawyer and law student desiring to develop their legal writing skills - or to polish up their existing ones. Th

Great guide for JD Students

Whether you are using the first or second edition of this book, very helpful for 1L student.