Written by a quartet of straight-talking author-lawyers, this is the most comprehensive and thorough reference guide on publishing law--in an easy to read format.

The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.

Please note: The second edition of The Complete Legal Writer will be out in August. The Complete Legal Writer lives up to its name, providing everything legal research and writing professors and students need in a textbook, including citation literacy, research skills, writing process, a wide range of legal documents, and more. Using the cutting-edge Genre Discovery Approach, this book teaches students to guide themselves through the process of writing unfamiliar legal document types and thereby prepares students to write independently in upper-level classes and the workplace. To aid in teaching Genre Discovery, the authors provide three exacting samples of each document type covered in the book, a rhetorical analysis of each document type, and specific questions to guide students as they study the samples. The Complete Legal Writer covers document types that are traditionally taught in the first year, such as office memos and appellate briefs, as well as document types taught in upper-level and non-traditional first-year curricula, including trial briefs, demand letters, and employer blog posts. Furthermore, this book covers an essential skill for all legal writing classes: giving and receiving feedback. In addition to explaining how to give feedback to and receive feedback from peers, an important skill given the rise of peer-feedback practices in the LRW classroom, The Complete Legal Writer also covers how to receive and implement feedback from professors and workplace supervisors in order to improve both a particular document and future documents. "The Complete Legal Writer lives up to its name: it presents a comprehensive, fresh, and intuitive approach to teaching legal writing that invites students to confidently and enthusiastically cross the divide between their prior writing experiences and the world of legal writing. By giving students the tools they need to critically examine the documents that lawyers write, the authors'' genre-discovery approach empowers students to meet (and exceed) the expectations of their new reading audience, even when they are faced with the challenge of writing a document they may not have seen before. With the text''s warm tone, humorous touches, and vivid examples, the authors have hit a homerun that will engage faculty and students alike while arming students with skills they will use throughout their professional lives." -- Ruth Ann McKinney, Emerita Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law "This uniquely reader-centered text indeed empowers students to grow into complete legal writers. The authors gently yet firmly guide students through "genre discovery": careful study of sample legal documents, by which students construct for themselves the conceptual frameworks that writers of such documents need. Students thus till the soil, plant seeds of understanding, and harvest their own insights--and thereby enjoy "ground-up" rather than "top-down" learning that is refreshingly autonomous and remarkably effective." -- Craig T. Smith, Assistant Dean for the Writing and Learning Resources Center and Clinical Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law "The Complete Legal Writer promises much and delivers more. The text covers fundamental concepts including legal logic and analysis, research methodology, the writing process, and citation literacy. The overall tone is refreshingly readable and will undoubtedly resonate with students. What sets the text apart is not the wide variety of sample legal documents offered, but its potential to equip students with a method of evaluating all documents/genres using an approach that will prepare them to write and ultimately to practice more effectively. The rhetorical legal genre approach is quite a discovery, and no law library collection would be complete without this book." --Marie Summerlin Hamm, Law Library Journal

“An essential title for anyone thinking of law school or concerned with America's dysfunctional legal system.” —Library Journal On the surface, law schools today are thriving. Enrollments are on the rise and law professors are among the highest paid. Yet behind the flourishing facade, law schools are failing abjectly. Recent front-page stories have detailed widespread dubious practices, including false reporting of LSAT and GPA scores, misleading placement reports, and the fundamental failure to prepare graduates to enter the profession. Addressing all these problems and more is renowned legal scholar Brian Z. Tamanaha. Piece by piece, Tamanaha lays out the how and why of the crisis and the likely consequences if the current trend continues. The out-of-pocket cost of obtaining a law degree at many schools now approaches $200,000. The average law school graduate’s debt is around $100,000—the highest it has ever been—while the legal job market is the worst in decades. Growing concern with the crisis in legal education has led to high-profile coverage in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and many observers expect it soon will be the focus of congressional scrutiny. Bringing to the table his years of experience from within the legal academy, Tamanaha provides the perfect resource for assessing what’s wrong with law schools and figuring out how to fix them. “Failing Law Schools presents a comprehensive case for the negative side of the legal education debate and I am sure that many legal academics and every law school dean will be talking about it.” —Stanley Fish, Florida International University College of Law

The book re-orients jurisprudence and develops an empirically informed theory of law that applies throughout history and across different societies.

"The Complete Bar Writer teaches readers how to prepare for the Multistate Performance Test and the Multistate Essay Exam (and similar bar performance tests and essay exams). Readers learn how to transfer the legal writing knowledge that they learned in law school to the bar exam, and how to build upon that foundation with skills specific to bar exam success. The book also fills gaps in readers' knowledge by teaching legal writing, analysis, and reading-and how to do all of those things under pressure. These skills are useful lawyering skills that readers can use after test day. As readers prepare for the bar exam, they will learn how to approach any MPT problem, no matter what kind of document they're assigned to write; how to evaluate their own practice exams and carry that knowledge forward to do better on their next ones; how to prepare for test day; and how to prepare for things that might go wrong. The Complete Bar Writer meets readers where they are with their legal writing knowledge and ensures they have the skills they need on bar exam day"--