Critical thinking is the essential tool for ensuring that students fulfill their promise. But, in reality, critical thinking is still a luxury good, and students with the greatest potential are too often challenged the least. Thinking Like a Lawyer: Introduces a powerful but practical framework to close the critical thinking gap. Gives teachers the tools and knowledge to teach critical thinking to all students. Helps students adopt the skills, habits, and mindsets of lawyers. Empowers students to tackle 21st-century problems. Teaches students how to compete in a rapidly changing global marketplace. Colin Seale, a teacher-turned-attorney-turned-education-innovator and founder of thinkLaw, uses his unique experience to introduce a wide variety of concrete instructional strategies and examples that teachers can use in all grade levels and subject areas. Individual chapters address underachievement, the value of nuance, evidence-based reasoning, social-emotional learning, equitable education, and leveraging families to close the critical thinking gap.

This primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. It covers such topics as rules, precedent, authority, analogical reasoning, the common law, statutory interpretation, legal realism, judicial opinions, legal facts, and burden of proof.

Students of the law are often told that they must learn to “think like a lawyer,” but they are given surprisingly little help in understanding just what this amounts to. Generally, they are expected to pick up this ability by example and perhaps by osmosis. But it remains the case that very few lawyers—even very good ones—are consciously aware of what it means to think like a lawyer.In this insightful and highly revealing book, Kenneth J. Vandevelde identifies, explains, and interprets the goals and methods of the well-trained lawyer. This is not a book about the content of the law; it is about a well-developed and valuable way of thinking that can be applied to many fields.Both practical and sophisticated, Thinking Like a Lawyer avoids the pitfalls common to most books on legal reasoning: It neither assumes too much legal knowledge nor condescends to its readers. Invaluable for law students and practicing lawyers, the book will also effectively interpret legal thinking for lay readers seeking a better understanding of the often mysterious ways of the legal profession.

A thorough and engaging introduction to legal reasoning that is perfect for law students and for established lawyers looking to improve their analytical abilities. This book focuses on fundamental skills necessary for legal problem solving, such as rule-based reasoning (deductive reasoning), synthesis (inductive reasoning), analogical reasoning, distinguishing cases, and policy-based reasoning. Exercises that appear throughout the text enable you to practice the skills you are gaining as you progress through the chapters.

Law students, law professors, and lawyers frequently refer to the process of "thinking like a lawyer," but attempts to analyze in any systematic way what is meant by that phrase are rare. In his classic book, Kenneth J. Vandevelde defines this elusive phrase and identifies the techniques involved in thinking like a lawyer. Unlike most legal writings, which are plagued by difficult, virtually incomprehensible language, this book is accessible and clearly written and will help students, professionals, and general readers gain important insight into this well-developed and valuable way of thinking. Updated for a new generation of lawyers, the second edition features a new chapter on contemporary perspectives on legal reasoning. A useful new appendix serves as a survival guide for current and prospective law students and describes how to apply the techniques in the book to excel in law school.

Critical thinking is the essential tool for ensuring that students fulfill their promise. But, in reality, critical thinking is still a luxury good, and students with the greatest potential are too often challenged the least. Thinking Like a Lawyer: Introduces a powerful but practical framework to close the critical thinking gap. Gives teachers the tools and knowledge to teach critical thinking to all students. Helps students adopt the skills, habits, and mindsets of lawyers. Empowers students to tackle 21st-century problems. Teaches students how to compete in a rapidly changing global marketplace. Colin Seale, a teacher-turned-attorney-turned-education-innovator and founder of thinkLaw, uses his unique experience to introduce a wide variety of concrete instructional strategies and examples that teachers can use in all grade levels and subject areas. Individual chapters address underachievement, the value of nuance, evidence-based reasoning, social-emotional learning, equitable education, and leveraging families to close the critical thinking gap.

This is a book about the law and life of Rome—in which contributors respond to John Crook's injunction to 'think like lawyers' by ranging as far as ancient Greece, ancient Persia and modern Denmark to expound their themes and draw comparisons. An opening section focuses on Civil Law, more or less as conventionally conceived, with chapters on the peculium, on municipal law at Irni in Roman Spain, on advisers of Roman provincial governors, and on violent crime. Roman perceptions of the physical and human worlds are the focus of a second section, and comparisons between Greek, Roman and modern ways of thinking about law and government come into the third section. In the final section, contributors argue the history of law and life from refractions of real and imagined Rome.