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.

Steven Burton's AN INTRODUCTION TO LAW AND LEGAL REASONING, Second Edition continues to be an ideal learning tool for first-year law students in a variety of introductory courses including orientation programs, legal reasoning, lawyering skills, or first-year substantive courses. Written specifically for beginning law students, this concise paperback helps students gain an understanding of law and legal reasoning by emphasizing how they can use cases, rules, precedent, holding, and other elementary legal concepts to solve legal problems. Especially easy to use, The Second Edition: offers concise, lucid text gives more attention to competing, contemporary modes of analysis including Critical Legal Studies and philosophical critiques clearly delineates the structure of law as precedents, rules, principles, and policies introduces many new examples coherently organized in nine chapters, INTRODUCTION TO LAW AND LEGAL REASONING covers cases and rules, analogical and deductive legal reasoning, legal reasons and conventions, purposes, judges' and lawyers' perspectives, and legitimacy. short and affordable, this book is a good fit for orientation programs, introductory courses on legal reasoning or legal method, lawyering skills courses, or as a supplementary text in any first-year substantive course.

“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward. “Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal