Best law practice books according to redditors

We found 147 Reddit comments discussing the best law practice books. We ranked the 55 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Subcategories:

Law office management books
Law office marketing books
Law office technology books
Legal services books
Paralegals & paralegalism books
Law practice reference books
Law practice research books

Top Reddit comments about Law Practice:

u/Powaaaa · 94 pointsr/worldnews

> Depends on the system of citation. See, e.g., The Bluebook.

FTFY

u/Nothingcreativeatm · 25 pointsr/worldnews

Depends on the system of citation. See The Bluebook.

u/2010_12_24 · 23 pointsr/worldnews

See, for example, e.g., The Bluebook, for instance.

u/SmileyFace-_- · 20 pointsr/unpopularopinion

I was reading a book called "What About Law" and one of the chapters mentioned this, including it being used in a case about a women who was robbed of a ring given to her by her mother (who was given it by her mother). It's a great book even if you're not particularly interested in law, and is very accessible. Each chapter focuses on a case e.g. Criminal law focused on the importance of intent - for example, a boy set out to murder a girl, and believed he could do so by making a voodoo doll of her and pushing pins inside of the doll. Obviously, it did not actually kill her, but there was clear intent - but is that enough to convinct him (spoiler - it was!). Great read.

u/Sawagurumi · 16 pointsr/theredpillright

George Orwell: 1984. Essential to understanding the Totalitarian Left, and ideas that have now entered our language and are becoming more relevant by the day, such as doublethink, thoughtcrime, and newspeak.

Donald J. Boudreaux: The Essential Hayek. (also Hayek's original works, eg The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty, but they are much more expensive. This is a good introduction to the Austrian School of economics).

Carroll Quigley: Tragedy & Hope: a history of the world in our time.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf
> One of these persistent questions is typical of the twentieth century rather than of earlier times: Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem of whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change. from this discussion emerged a fairly general agreement that men live in separately organized societies, each with its own distinct culture; that some of these societies, having writing and city life, exist on a higher level of culture than the rest, and should be called by the different term "civilizations"; and that these civilizations tend to pass through a common pattern of experience.

Carroll Quigley: The Evolution of Civilizations. http://www.archive.org/stream/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis1979#page/n1/mode/2up
> In this perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations, Professor Quigley seeks to establish the analytical tools necessary for understanding history. He examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels, from the more abstract to the more concrete—intellectual, religious, social, political, economic, and military—and he identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion.

J.C. Unwin: Sex and Culture
https://archive.org/details/b20442580
> With care-free open-mindedness I decided to test, by a reference to human records, a somewhat startling conjecture that had been made by analytical psychologists. This suggestion was that if the social regulations forbid direct satisfaction of the sexual impulses the emotional conflict is expressed in another way, and that what we call 'civilization' has always been built up by compulsory sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.

Sir John Glubb: The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
> d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:

>The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

> The Age of Conquests

>The Age of Commerce

>The Age of Affluence

>The Age of Intellect

>The Age of Decadence.

>(e) Decadence is marked by:

>Defensiveness

>Pessimism

>Materialism

>Frivolity

>An influx of foreigners

>The Welfare State

>A weakening of religion.

>(f) Decadence is due to:

>Too long a period of wealth and power

>Selfishness

>Love of money

>The loss of a sense of duty.

>(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

E. Belfort Bax: The Fraud of Feminism. http://www.angryharry.com/FraudOfFeminism.htm (written in 1913, it clearly shows that there was no 'golden age' of feminism, and that feminists can never be satisfied).
> Though women have been conceded all the rights of men, their privileges as females have remained untouched, while the sentimental "pull" they have over men, and the favouritism shown them in the courts, civil and criminal, often in flagrant violation of elementary justice, continues as before. The result of their position on juries, as evinced in certain trials, has rather confirmed the remarks made in Chapter II. anent [concerning] hysteria than otherwise. The sex-bias of men in favour of women and the love of the advanced woman towards her sex-self show no sign of abatement.

And two recent important works in political philosophy that are therefore not available for free.

John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. A seminal book providing an alternative to Utilitarianism. "Rawls's "Theory of Justice" is widely and justly regarded as this century's most important work of political philosophy. "
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0674000781/

T.M. Scanlon. What We Owe to Each Other. Following on from Rawls' insights, and applying them more broadly than only to justice, to what underpins a society working together. "What do we owe to each other? What obligations of honesty, respect, trust and consideration exist between people?"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/067400423X/

Finally

Jonathan Haidt: Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt shows that there are at least 6 foundations of what people see as social good. Of these, the Left see 'Caring' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Libertarians see 'Liberty' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Conservatives are fairly evenly balanced across the 6, and have the easiest time understanding the perspective of the others as a result. See also http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042366 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUM4akzLGE. You might know Haidt from this talk: http://www.sciencevsfeminism.com/the-myth-of-equality/jonathan-haidt-coddling-u-strengthening-u/

u/Thereal_Sandman · 16 pointsr/guns

Ok, this is gonna be long, but it'll be worth it.

I live in California, I'm a gun owner, and I've done extensive research on the topics touched on in this thread.

First off, I urge you to buy a copy of this book, as it will provide most of the answers you will be looking for.

Here we go. To answer your main question, it is a "wobbler" (a crime that can be charged as either a misdemeanor or felony) in California to import, assemble, sell, offer for sale or transfer, or otherwise transfer an assembled magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds to anyone not a Sworn Peace officer, licenses armed guard, or firearms dealer with a specific license issued by CA DOJ.

What does this mean? This means that any pistol you buy (legally) is going to come with magazines that are designed to hold 10 rounds (most reputable manufacturers make dedicated 10 round capacity mags for current manufacture pistols). Pistols that came with >10 rounds and were not manufactured after ~1994 you are going to get an aftermarket magazine, or in some rare cases a magazine that has been pinned or otherwise permanently altered to only hold 10 rounds or less.

If you possessed (in California) magazines with a >10 round capacity prior to January 1, 2000 it is perfectly legal for you to possess, carry and use those magazines. It is also perfectly legal for you to loan them (short term, vague legal wording, I take it to mean like in your presence) to anyone else who may legally possess a firearm.

It is also legal for you to order and possess repair parts for your legally possessed >10 round magazines, including complete "repair kits" consisting of all parts for a magazine, as long as you do not assemble them into new magazines.

Now this is just hypothetical, but if you were to assemble one of those repair kits into a new magazine with a >10 round capacity, the State must prove that you did so within the last 3 years. The statute of limitations for manufacture, import, sale, or transfer of a >10 round capacity magazine is 3 years from the date of the crime. As I mentioned earlier, it is a "wobbler", so you could be charged with either a felony or a misdemeanor, mostly depending on the local DA.

There is also speculation that it is legal to buy a >10 round magazine, as the relevant law (PC 12020(a)(2), I know it's PC12020, but I'm not certain about the section) does not specifically prohibit purchase, but to my knowledge no one has ever tried that defense in court.

Handguns that are not on the safe handgun roster cannot be sold by an FFL, with one exception: a Single Shot Transfer (SST). If you can find an FFL willing to do a SST for that firearm, you can buy pretty much anything, assuming it can be altered to be single shot. An SST is where the dealer alters the firearm to a single shot configuration before transferring the firearm to you (this generally means they swap the barrel with something that is long enough to meet the SST length requirement, and a "zero capacity" magazine (one that will not accept cartridges). Once you legally own the firearm it is perfectly legal for you to put the pistol back into its factory configuration, or to have the FFL do so on your behalf (they usually will sell you the conversion parts with the gun and then offer to buy them back for the same price).

Also handguns not on the roster can be legally purchased from a private party, or can be gifted to you by a parent or child living out of state (assuming the child is 21+).

The gun laws here suck, but they're generally not as bad as people (including FFL's, don't assume that they know anything about the law just because they can sell guns) make them out to be.

If you want those laws changed, vote for candidates that will do so, and donate to the CalGuns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation. Those organizations are actively working to make our shitty gun laws better.

Edit:
The handgun roster requires 3 guns of each model and 1200 rounds for each gun to be submitted by the manufacturer of testing to an approved California Handgun Safety Test Center, along with a $600 fee per gun. If any of the three guns fails any part of the test the manufacturer must resubmit all three guns, and another 1200 rounds and $600 per gun to have them retested. After certification, the manufacturer must pay $200 per year for each model to maintain the certification. It's a huge and arbitrary mess. Many manufacturers just don't find it worth getting a model that does not sell like hot cakes certified. Also to be added to the list after 2006, all models must have a loaded chamber indicator and a magazine safety disconnect. Models on the list prior to 2006 are exempt as long as the manufacturer pays the extortion maintenance fee every year.

u/WastedP0tential · 14 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

First of all, sorry that you feel (or were) antagonized by atheistic groups. Everyone should remember the difference between factual critique and personal attack, and avoid the latter as possible. On the other hand, Christianity incorporates a lot of outrageously stupid, wrong and immoral doctrines, and if you perform apologetics for those doctrines, you might easily come across as immoral yourself.

To your points: absolutism abounds in theistic thought. Theologians throughout the ages loved to talk about the highest, the most ideal, the absolutely perfect, the perfectly good, the absolute and unquestionable Truth (with a capital T), pure love and so on. Everything that doesn't meet that standard of absolute perfection is equally doomed and unworthy. This line of thinking is always based on nirvana fallacies and fallacies of gray, and explains why theists frequently use the whole arsenal of fallacious arguments from epistemic relativism, moral relativism and presuppositionalism against any challenging philosophy.

To make it short, just because we can't create an ideal world, doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't improve our world. Arguing contrarily would commit a textbook example of the nirvana fallacy. Without reasonable doubt, a world without religion would be a much better place. Just some studies:

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 1

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 2

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 3

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 4

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 5

Negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence 6

Negative correlation between religiosity and education 1

Negative correlation between religiosity and education 2

Negative correlation between religiosity and education 3

Negative correlation between religiosity and education 4

Correlation between religiosity and societal dysfunction 1

Correlation between religiosity and societal dysfunction 2

Correlation between religiosity and societal dysfunction 3

Correlation between religiosity and societal dysfunction 4

Correlation between religiosity and crime rates 1

Correlation between religiosity and crime rates 2

Correlation between religiosity and crime rates 3

Above all, I find it quite curious that religious moderates have apparently completely given up on arguing that there is any truth in religious doctrines. Instead they just try to argue (with very little success) that religion is useful. That always strikes me as intellectually bankrupt.

If you ask a fundamentalist, he will always give you normal reasons for why he believes. Those reasons are all complete bogus and easily refutable, but the fundamentalist isn't aware of that and if they were true, he would indeed have rational justification for his faith. The moderate on the other hand seems to have given up all concern about what is true or not. He just claims that having faith is beneficial.

What a bizarre frame of mind. I think that's philosophical suicide. First we have to establish what is true or untrue, then we can talk about what to make of it. The facts are that Jesus wasn't the son of God, never performed any miracle and didn't rise from the dead. The Bible isn't the word of a deity, it's neither divinely authored nor inspired. The Gospels are neither historically accurate accounts, nor written by witnesses of the described events, but in fact written many decades after Jesus' death and refuted numerous times by the historical record. Intercessory prayer has absolutely no effect. Miracles, as described in religious scripture or literature, never happened. Neither churchmen nor church doctrines were inspired by a deity. Dualism is bunk, souls don't get injected into human fetuses, and consciousness is a product and a process of the physical brain that ends with its death. Homosexuality is completely natural and occurs in basically every mammalian species. Faith is not a virtue, it's a vice that makes people gullible and exploitable by charlatans and conmen. Being religious doesn't make people more moral, tendentially rather to the contrary. The explanation for the diversity of life is biological evolution, and evolution is not guided by anything except the forces of nature. Sin and hell don't exist, humanity isn't fallen and doesn't need redemption or salvation. Those claims were purely made up by religious leaders as parts of a scare and control tactic.

Accepting the facts has to come first. Then we can talk about what is useful or beneficial.

u/Seoul_Virus · 12 pointsr/sweden

Alltså. Det känns som om mannen är en kristen halmdocka av all dålig och moraliskt tveksam debatt-teknik man kan tänka sig.

Det finns så mycket värt att diskutera kring denna, men tråden lär knappast fyllas med folk som håller med honom, så jag fattar mig kort [höhö]: (alla markeringar är mina och jag har ändrat runt en del i citaten)

Det jag stör mig mest på är fulheten i det hela.

  • Konstigt valda källor.
  • Felvrider statistik.
  • Tar citat från kontext, för att man skall tolka det som han vill.
  • Använder en jävla Science Fiction-författare (förlåt forskare) med medföljande bok som källa.

    Listan över källor och påståenden:

    Robert Sawyer - Science Fiction-författare, vars böcker är ganska religionskritiska om jag minns rätt.

    Är som sagt en fiktionsförfattare, han kunde åtminstone ha valt en författare som delar hans åsikter: >"Enligt forskaren Orson Scott Card befinner vi oss just nu i krig med den utomjordiska rasen formics och har därför skickat upp 90% av våra intelligentaste barn för att stridsträna dem genom nollgravitations-laserdome."

    Phil Zuckerman Sociologiprofessor, jag vet inte han personliga tro men personen har kommit ut till försvar för ateism och har gett ut en bok som utforskar varför sekulära icketroende norden är så framgångsrikt (alltså raka motsatsen till vad herr kristdemokrat tycker)

    >Beräknar siffran till 92 procent [av troende på gud eller högre makt].

    Det är säkert helt riktigt, även om det inte stämmer överens med wikipedia till 100%
    Det finns många troende, det är ingen ateist som förnekar det. Det kan däremot vara värt att notera det fetstilta: eller högre makt, alltså inte bara den kristna guden. Även om kristendom är den enskilt största religionen så är det bara (enligt wiki) 31,5% som tror på den kristna guden, vilket alltså bryter mot det normala (inte för att det är någonting fel med att bryta mot det normala) som består av 68.5% av världens befolkning som inte tror på den kristna guden. Om man däremot lägger ihop de Abrahamitiska religionerna så får man 54% troende och 46% icketroende, frågan är hur många muslimer och kristna som verkligen går med på den där sammanfogningen som en religion under samma gud.

    Religion Watch - Påstår att de oberoende visar religiösa trender och statistik. Hittade inte så mycket info om dem när jag snabbsökte, så kan inte ge min åsikt om dem.

    >75 procent av alla forskare i världen tror på Gud, uppskattar Religion Watch Newsletter (1998, 13:8)

    Två saker bör noteras, för det första årtalet, alltså 15 år sedan, för det andra att det är i hela världen. Forskarnas åsikter speglas givetvis av befolkningen, om 99% av befolkningen är troende så kommer majoriteten av forskarna också vara troende. Tvärtemot vad vissa internetateister tror så blir man inte helt magiskt icketroende så fort man har ett mikroskop i handen.
    Det intressanta är däremot förhållandet mellan den generella befolkningen och forskarna i samma land. Där visas det att forskarna har en större andel icketroende, vilket antagligen säger någonting.



    James Leuba - psykolog. Gjorde studier gällande psykologi i samband med religion.

    >Till och med i 1900-talets mest rationalistiska forskningsmiljö, den på amerikanska universitet, har gudstron inte gått tillbaka under de senaste hundra åren

    Ja. Jänkarna är verkligen kända för att vara rationalistiska och icketroende. Frågan är varför han inte visade någon liknande undersökning i Sverige istället, eller var han rädd för vad den visade?

    >1914 gjorde James Leuba en undersökning bland USA:s forskare om deras syn på Gud. 40 procent trodde på en Gud. 40 procent trodde inte och 20 procent var osäkra.

    Känns rimligt.

    Edward Larson - historiker och Larry Witham - författare

    >1996 upprepades undersökningen av Edward Larson och Larry Witham, och då trodde 40 procent på Gud, 45 procent trodde inte på Gud och 15 procent var osäkra.

    I det stora hela känns det också rimligt men det finns flera saker att anmärka: Det första är åter igen årtalet, 17 år är tillräckligt lång tid för att kunna ge stora förändringar. Det andra är att den starka religiositeten ökade i USA under kalla kriget, vilket givetvis ger effekt på forskarvärlden också. Det tredje är att den amerikanska forskarvärlden i helhet inte är lika strikt som i Sverige. Det finns mängder av religiöst inriktade universitet som forskar om saker i stil med: "Vilken typ av dinosaurie red Jesus?" (detta är givetvis en överdrift, men andan är den samme), om undersökningen räknar med dessa "forskare" vet jag inte, men det är ingen omöjlighet.

    Stephen Jay Gould - Biolog och paleontolog

    >Han konstaterar att många av de absolut främsta forskarna tror på Gud: ”Antingen är hälften av mina kolleger enormt dumma, eller så är det fullt möjligt att förena darwinismen med konventionell religiös tro

    Herr Gould sade det här som försvar för evolutionsteorin mot alla young earth-kreationister som påstod att evolutionsläran är satans påhitt och strider mot kristendomen.Att det inte finns någonting som har hindrat en gud från att ha skapat människan via evolution. Om det är rimligt eller ej är däremot en annan fråga. Samma sak gäller kombinationen av religiös tro och vetenskap. Visst, det är ingenting som gör att de direkt strider mot varandra, att man tror på att en gud skapade x hindrar inte en från att vilja ta reda på hur x fungerar.
    DÄREMOT strider det rejält mot den vetenskapliga metoden att tro på någonting så starkt utan att ha några som helst bevis för det, till och med hårt ifrågasatta strängteorin har banne mig mer bevis än någon gud någonsin haft.

    Så. Då kommer frågan: ljuger herr Skånberg medvetet för att lura till sig sympatisörer, för det är knappast särskilt kristligt, eller är han så korkad eller oinsatt att han helt enkelt inte förstår bättre, för då borde han inte ha en debattartikel i en högt ansedd tidning.



    FL;LI

    HJÄLP JAG ÄR INSTÄNGD I EN WALL OF TEXT OCH KAN INTE HITTA UT.
u/HolySheed · 11 pointsr/LawSchool

Read all of Bryan Garner's books. They are worth it.

For starters, I would begin with Legal Writing in Plain English.

u/soulcakeduck · 9 pointsr/politics

Read Don Mitchell if this topic interests you at all. He has great stuff on speech, privacy, and shrinking public places. I find it fascinating. Basically, new jurisprudence is increasingly expanding the "right to be left alone." At the same time, traditional public spaces are disappearing (parks are privatized or replaced by malls).

That's how an employer can make their employees picket miles away from the entrance to the premises, even though that dramatically changes the effectiveness and content (no more "scabs crossing picket lines") of the speech.

The S.U.V. model of citizenship: floating bubbles, buffer zones, and the rise of the “purely atomic” individual

The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space

The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws in the United States


u/FauxPsych · 9 pointsr/LawSchool

Conclusion,
Rule,
Rule Explanation,
Application,
Conclusion

Within that, in addressing elements, you will probably have mini versions of:

Issue,
Rule,
Application,
Conclusion

That should be your default structure. As for actual headings, it depends on the memo.

For Predictive I used:

Question Presented;
Brief Answer;
Facts;
Discussion (This is the meat of the memo, that utilizes the above structures);
Conclusion

For Persuasive:

Introduction;
Statement of Facts;
Legal Standard;
Argument (HUGE, think headings and subheadings each with its own CRREAC or IRAC);
Conclusion

I would also strongly recommend Point Made. My school really stresses legal writing and clinical work so all of our legal writing professors are tenured.

u/[deleted] · 9 pointsr/LawSchool

No, it isn't. Don't bother. The material isn't difficult to understand, and there really isn't that much of it to learn. There's no point getting a head start when getting through the material is the absolute minimum that 100% of your classmates will accomplish by the time the exam rolls around.

Edit: If you absolutely must do nothing to calm yourself, read Getting To Maybe

u/ShadowSun07 · 8 pointsr/ADHD

Sorry, I've been hammering away at a journal article. I'm tempted to write a long-ass post but . . . . Hopefully you read this all but if not add me as a friend and shoot me messages as shit goes down.


Books: Top two recommendations (off the top of my head)


  • Learning Outside the Box by Leah Christensen. Link


  • Getting to Maybe by Richard Fischl. Link



    General Tips: (also off the top of my head)


  • Read the Short and Happy Guides to each class prior to classes starting. This will give you a 10,000 ft view, which you need.


  • Get organized (aka get your wife/mom/baby jesus) to make a planner. Make sure you use the damn thing too.


  • Westlaw and Lexis will murder you with so many pretty blue links. Read the entire article (and take physical notes) before clicking a link.


  • DO NOT USE A FUCKING LAPTOP EVERYTHING SHOULD BE ON PAPER It will take forever but you will actually learn it.


  • You need to work harder than you ever have. You must teach yourself to focus. Any random thoughts go onto a note pad that you keep next to yourself at all times.


  • Make an outline from the table of contents--fill it out every Friday after all class.


  • Turn off your phone and laptop when you need to study and study in chunks. When your tired take a walk then go back to work.


  • Technology and games are the enemy. Avoid them at all costs and do not play games before bed.



    Edit Forgot to mention. Law school is about 40% confidence, 50% hard work, and 10% keeping it cool (but really hard work)
u/DaSilence · 6 pointsr/AskLEO

>Could you elaborate on how a social contract makes following laws an ethical matter?

Not on Reddit, I don't have anywhere near that kind of time.

http://smile.amazon.com/Locke-Treatises-Government-Cambridge-Political/dp/0521357306

http://smile.amazon.com/Social-Contract-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486426920

http://smile.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781

These three books are a great place to start. Consider me your intro to political philosophy professor.

u/DarthBarney · 6 pointsr/Denver

You've not been here long I take it. Andrew Romanoff was the youngest Speaker of the House in our history. He was term limited & he is well liked and respected.

Take some time to get to know him, he's more qualified for the position than everyone else combined. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, took time off from Yale to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he researched the Ku Klux Klan. He also worked at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and taught English in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. During his time in Nicaragua, his political philosophy was shaped by reading A Theory of Justice by liberal philosopher John Rawls.

Then he earned a Master's degree in public policy from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Prior to earning a law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Romanoff worked for Democratic Congressman David Skaggs.

u/liberummentis · 6 pointsr/LawSchool

I cannot over-recommend Bryan Garner's Legal Writing in Plain English. He has been the editor of the Black's Law Dictionary for the past few editions, and his legal writing style is simple and effective.

u/weirds3xstuff · 6 pointsr/changemyview

For political science, I liked "Why Nations Fail". For political theory, the 1-2 punch of "A Theory of Justice" and "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" is obligatory. If you ever just want to cry, there's "A Problem from Hell."

The political problem I'm most interested in is how to conduct votes. www.equal.vote has some really good information about how different voting systems work and how the voting systems used in all developed democracies are not optimal. Best of luck.

u/aelphabawest · 5 pointsr/LawSchool

My school has a repository at our library for old exams - both the questions and what the professor considered a "good exam." Maybe yours does as well? Worth reading if so.

It is absolutely not a knowledge dump. The rule of thumb you'll hear a lot is some variation of IRACC (issue, rule, analysis, counter argument, conclusion). You're looking for the gaps. You're looking to apply the knowledge you learned.

You may want to read Getting to Maybe.

u/rutterkin · 5 pointsr/LawSchool

I did the Kaplan prep course and it was really helpful when I went into the LSAT. Recommended. You can probably get an old one cheap.

I also really recommend the book "Getting to Maybe," which will give you a really good idea of what law school is going to be like, particularly law school exams.

u/ReallyNicole · 4 pointsr/DebateReligion

> The social contract is a book by Jean-Jaques Rousseau.

Holy fuck. Seriously? So whenever some humanist says to you "well we should move society forward because of the social contract" you thought they were talking about some book written a couple hundred years ago? Jesus, I'm sorry.

Maybe do some reading and catch up on what's happened in the past 250 years:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#H3

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408065363&sr=1-1&keywords=A+Theory+of+Justice

>Secular humanists believe we have a duty to help all humans improve their lives, correct?

Sure, but this in no way entails that human life has a purpose. That some moral claims are true doesn't alone entail that any teleological claims are true.

u/sorasonline · 4 pointsr/LawSchool

The Bluebook is basically the U.S. legal citation bible. You won't find a U.S.-trained lawyer who isn't familiar with it, though proficiency will vary substantially. Fair warning, it's not really user friendly if you don't have some legal training or a general understanding of citation structure, but you can pick that up.

It's like a writing style manual, but exclusively for building legal citations. Blue pages are mostly for memoranda and briefs, white pages have more material you'll expect to use for professional articles / law review work.

u/wizardyourlifeforce · 4 pointsr/LawSchool

Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams
(https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Maybe-Excel-School-Exams/dp/0890897603/)

Worth it just for the exam formatting advice.

u/Dialectical_Dribbles · 4 pointsr/askphilosophy

The question of desert is central to considerations on justice. Two easy places to get an introduction online are the SEP’s entry and the IEP’s entry.

If you’re looking for particular texts, as far as the contemporary liberal tradition is concerned I recommend the contrast you can find between Walzer’s Spheres of Justice and Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.

In short, for Walzer desert and distribution should be considered based on a plurality of standards which he refers to as complex equality. Thus, ideas such as the right to vote and health care, as distinctly different social goods, should not be considered under the same ideas of desert and distributed according to the same principles. Whereas, by most readings, Rawls takes the route of making desert largely (or completely) inapplicable to matters of distributive justice, which is an interesting and ongoing debate in political philosophy on just how, if at all, desert matters for Rawls.

(Edit for type-o’s.)

u/bunksterz · 4 pointsr/LawSchool

If you're looking for some good prep work these books all helped me immensely.

1L of a Ride This one was my favorite and I looked at pretty often for my first month of school.

Reading Like a Lawyer

Expert Learning for Law Students

I feel like these three really gave me a good head start to law school. You cover the basic skills you'll be using your first semester (and all of law school, but you can tweak/find your own way after your fall semester). They give you some practice reading and briefing cases, help you figure out what to look for when you're studying and include some helpful tips on how to do well overall. They also include some good life tips of how to stay happy and feel comfortable outside of class.

u/Brym · 4 pointsr/casualiama

Cool. If you want some unsolicited law school advice, I highly recommend that you read Getting to Maybe for advice on how to write a decent law school exam. I would read it once before classes start, and again when studying for your first exams.

u/nullomore · 4 pointsr/GradSchool

They are not supposed to read like memoirs in that it shouldn't be a complete history of your life, but it's okay to use anecdotes to tell your story. In fact, I'd recommend it.

There's a great book called 55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays (http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116). I highly recommend that you read a good bunch of them to get a feel for what a good personal statement sounds like. When you read them, try to criticize the essay before reading the criticisms presented on the next page. In my opinion, the given criticisms are often spot-on. Test yourself to pick out what's good and bad about the essays until your intuition is good.

When you write your own, here's what I recommend

  • Decide what is the one more important thing that you want to express. Make sure it's not something already included in your resume. Some acceptable choices are "I am a person who will work damn hard to achieve my goals" or "I am a creative problem solver" or "My special skills in this area will help me be a great student/researcher."

  • Write down a few anecdotes that demonstrate this one idea. Make sure the anecdotes are fairly specific. For example, if you want to talk about how working in a lab during college taught you important things, make sure you state exactly what you did and exactly what that experience taught you. This is the part where you're allowed to embellish a little. If your story isn't quite 100% perfectly suited to your purpose, it's okay to fudge it a little.

  • Weave these anecdotes together in an essay so that it has emotional impact and clearly presents the one idea that you wanted to express.

    source: Editing personal statements is a big part of my job.
u/libertao · 3 pointsr/law

Do you mean Point Made?

u/missiontothemoon · 3 pointsr/LawSchool

Getting to Maybe is the answer. One-L, Planet Law School, etc. are not useful.

Read Getting to Maybe over the summer, read it again mid-way through the semester, and flip through it before your exams.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-To-Maybe-Excel-School/dp/0890897603

I am not affiliated with Richard Fischl, just a law student.

u/vexion · 3 pointsr/gaming

As a second-year law student, and a guy who threw his heart and soul into the law school application/admission process, I want to offer a few pointers here, maybe lead one person down the right path.

  1. Too many people go to law school for the wrong reasons: their parents pushed them into it, they don't have any other direction in their life, or they just want to make money. If you just want to make money, that's fine, but you really, really need to understand #2:

  2. There is a bimodal salary distribution in entry-level legal jobs. This means, when you graduate, you will either: A) Make six figures working 80 hours a week, minimum, at a top-tier law firm, B) Make $50,000, if you're lucky, doing contract jobs, or if you're really lucky, working government/non-profit, or C) Be unemployed. Law schools game the employment figures to all show 99% employment, when those actually gainfully-employed, able to pay off their crushing student loans on a reasonable time frame, are more like 10%, at a mid-level school, 25-50% at the best.

  3. There are 200 law schools in America. Very seriously, if you really want a job, you have two options: Go to the best school in the region (i.e., to work in Kentucky, you can only go to the University of Kentucky, maybe Vanderbilt. People from Louisville and NKU struggle for employment). Or, you can go to one of the top law schools in the nation, the very few where your degree might actually have some national reach. Law schools are ranked annually by U.S. News and World Report, and, broken system or not, the best firms in the world hire almost exclusively from the "top 14" schools.

    Some highly suggested reading before you start thinking about law school:

  • Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! - A NYT article from this summer that kind of brought the law school scam (spinning employment statistics, including median salaries, and jacking up tuitions) to the forefront. There was a lot of outcry from the legal profession and legal academia at its publication.

  • Above The Law - A tabloid blog for the legal profession. Sometimes fun reading, they take a very cynical tack on law school and legal prospects in general.

  • The Top-Law-Schools.com forums - If you really want to go to law school, this is the place to spend all your time. These are a bunch of people really dedicated to getting into, and succeeding at, the top law schools in the country. Your GPA and LSAT are everything here, so study HARD, and retake if you have to.

  • Law School Confidential, by Robert Miller - This is a great guide for success once you're in law school, and I would recommend it for every incoming 1L.

  • 1L, by Scott Turow - This is a really fascinating memoir of a famous author/lawyer's first year at Harvard Law, and it holds true for the 1L experience at almost any law school. The 1L year is very standardized across the country: same classes, same case method, same Socratic method.

  • Planet Law School II, by Atticus Falcon - This one I recommend with a big caveat: the author is a very jaded, cynical person who hides behind the wall of a pseudonym and rails against law schools and the legal profession. It's also a pretty long book. But if you have the extra time/money, it's worth thumbing through, albeit taking what's in there with a grain of salt. It pretty much angrily tears apart the American law school institution.

  • How to Get Into the Top Law Schools, by Richard Montauk - This book is gold for the law school admissions process. The TLS forums (above) will recommend this highly. If you're dead-set on going to law school, read it. And best of luck at Yale!

  • The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, by Anna Ivey - This is another one that I recommend for law school applications, along with the Montauk book. It's shorter, and Ivey comes off as a know-it-all snob, but the information is solid.

    I'm not trying to out-and-out discourage you from going to law school. If you actually do research, then find out it's what you really want, go for it. Crush the LSAT out of the park and go somewhere that will guarantee you a job. Do not go to a fourth-tier law school (John Marshall, Florida Coastal, Cooley, etc.) just because they sent you a bunch of marketing materials in the mail with an offer for a free scholarship. These places are the University of Phoenix of law schools. Any law school that has to advertise by mail really isn't worth the price of the (worthless) degree.


u/moreLytes · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

At the outset, please note that this topic is exceedingly slippery. I am convinced that the most efficient way to understand these issues is through the study of philosophy of ethics.

> Where do atheists get their [sense of] morality?

Nature, nurture, and the phenomenological self-model.

> What defines the "good" and "bad" that has
permeated much of human society?

Easy: notice that personal definitions of morality between individuals immersed in the same culture tend to strongly overlap (e.g., most moderns consider rape to be "bad").

From this considerable volume of data, it is fairly simple to construct principles that adequately generalize these working definitions, such as "promote happiness", and "mitigate pain".

> [If you're not caught, why not murder? Why donate to charity? Does might make right?]

These questions appear to have both practical and intuitive solutions.

What are you trying to understand?

> How do atheists tend to reconcile moral relativism?

What do you mean?

> Barring the above deconstructions, how do atheists account for morality?

Moral theories largely attempt to bridge the gap between descriptive facts and normative commands:

  • Kant argued that norms are not discovered via our senses, but are simply axiomatic principles.
  • Rawls argued that norms are the product of a hypothetical agreement in which all ideally rational humans would affirm certain values (Social Contract) if they didn't know their fate in advance (Veil Of Ignorance).
  • Mill argued that norms are best expressed through the need to increase pleasure and decrease pain.
  • Parfit argued that these three approaches don't really contradict one another.
  • Nietzsche argued that norms and artistic tastes are the same.
  • Mackie argued that norms are human inventions that include social welfare considerations.

u/satanic_hamster · 3 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

> So, if black people choose to remain in the country, they have to abide by how they're treated? What about being poor, if they don't like the country they should move somewhere else?

Don't get what black people have to do with anything. If you want to import irrelevant context to imply something I never said, you're welcome to do it, but you're arguing in bad faith at that point.

The basic point is that to the extent that you and I are citizens (I'll take it to be for the sake of argument you live in the US as do I) of this country, we consent (insofar as we continue to accept and be okay with things, despite whatever reservations we have) to one degree or another to the way things currently are, and we have a say and a share in a wide variety of things, as members:

  • We get to participate in the economy.
  • We are afforded certain protections under the law.
  • We get to benefit from communal and public enterprises.

    And which also includes our right to challenge the status quo (as has been done many times in our history). And you can go down the line as far as you want to, part of which I illustrated to another person a while ago.

    > The social contract is the equivalent of saying it's okay for you to beat your wife because she hasn't left you yet.

    Contractarianism is a highly sophisticated and nuanced moral philosophy. One that I adhere to with respect to certain tenets. And you hardly do it justice with one sentence that sweeps it under the rug. If you have any actual interest however, I'd start with John Rawls. You know as well as I do that statement is pure nonsense.
u/Juffy · 3 pointsr/LawSchool
u/yumeoimushi · 3 pointsr/LawSchool

Point made by Guberman and Making Your Case helped a lot for me, personally.

The trick at my school is to find out what the professor's expectations are and produce product that's as close as possible to it. I think some of my classmates try too hard to be lawyers, law review editors, or judges. Good luck!

u/Sauwan · 3 pointsr/politics

John Rawls, Justice as Fairness

Virtually any modern political philosophy is either based off, or a refutation of Rawl's work.

It's a must read.

u/HippeHoppe · 3 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

I'm actually a minarchist who believes in a particular kind of restricted natural duty theory of social contract (Kant's justification for the state), but I was an ancap for a long time so I think I can give a good crack at an ancap answer.

>The social contract doesn't exist as a single legal document that one writes up and then signs, to be stored away for future reference.

As you say, the social contract is very clearly not a single historical event which establishes consent. However, this is one very common way of arguing for a particular kind of social contract (in particular, it's a common libertarian way of arguing for a social contract), so it's not as if ancaps are just strawmanning the position.

The general problem seems to be establishing:

(1) what the contract actually is

(2) how it's established

If the social contract is supposed to operate like any other contract, so that you 'consent' to the terms of the contract by an actual act of consent, then there are some pretty clear problems. For one thing, it's hard to identify what specific actions constitute consent - and, if you didn't perform those actions, would that constitute non-consent? For instance, if using government roads means that you consent to the government, then does not using those roads mean you don't consent? Second, it seems like the only way that a lot of these conditions for consent can "get going" in the first place is through something you did not consent to - for instance, in order for the government to begin to provide services for the "first citizens" who benefited from those services, the government probably coerced those citizens to make that provision possible (for example, by taxing them, or by preventing competing organizations from providing the same services). This is most clearly the case with law/security/defense.

For example, if the US government commanded the obedience of native Americans because they were "residing on US government land", this wouldn't be legitimate, because the only reason the US government "owns" that land is by conquering and subjugating the non-consenting Indians; so the conditions for consent depend on a coercive act, which invalidates the state's claim to those conditions.

This general approach to social contract theory, which establishes some way of providing actual consent, is called a transactional consent theory - the idea is that people have certain moral rights in a vacuum, but that that transact or transfer those rights to the state by an act of consent. There are other credible approaches to justification of a social contract, but I think it's pretty clear that the transactional model (which most libertarians criticize) is not one of them. It ends up boiling down to "you relate to the government by X, which means you consent", and libertarians saying (probably correctly) that "the only reason X exists is because the government coerced me prior to establishing X!"

> It exists as a state of relationships between people, communities and societies. We observe it's natural convention at work when we interact with our friends as opposed to strangers, family members as opposed to foreigners, and as one nation in contrast with other nations.

This is a more 'associative' theory of political obligation - the idea is that, because you exist in some unchosen association with other people, this establishes some sort of collective obligation for people due to this association. But it seems like the problem with this theory is that, absent some more ethical work to flesh it out, it's only begging the question: we have a political obligation to people based on X association (family, clan, race, nation, humanity, etc.) because... why, exactly? It seems like the answer is just "because of the association" (we can talk about all the details of that association - the fact that you share certain characteristics or have a shared history, or because you tend to cooperate together, or something else), but, again, it seems like it builds the conclusion ("unchosen associations imply obligations") into the premise.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that, because I think it is possible to mount a compelling defense of an associative theory of political obligation (it's actually a theory associated more strongly with conservative political philosophy - although your flair says you're a socialist, the best sources for this sort of theory are, imo, Aristotle and Edmund Burke). But it's not very compelling for most people today, because people today generally think that consent is a morally important factor for the sort of stuff that the state does, and the social contract is supposed to show us that consent actually exists. This associative theory might establish that we have a duty to obey the law and the state has a right to command us, but it doesn't establish that this relationship is consensual (for the theorists I have in mind who advocate this theory, however, consent simply isn't important for establishing political authority or obligation).

>In any country you live in, certain rights are accorded to you as a citizen that aren't available to other people who aren't.

First, ancaps will disagree with this characterization of rights. Ancaps think (and I do too, even though I'm not an ancap) that rights are logically and historically prior to the state: even if there exists no state, you have certain rights, and these rights don't depend on their being secured to be morally important (for instance, even if you have no way of defending yourself and you live in a stateless island, it would still be a violation of your rights for someone else to kill you).

Second, it's unclear what the sort of positive rights you're talking about have to do with the social contract without at least some further explanation. The mere fact that you are given special privileges doesn't seem to imply that your relationship with the person who grants those privileges is consensual - for instance, you might be accorded rights to water use against your neighbors (so that your neighbors can't use some water, but you can) because of a local warlord who prefers you to your neighbors. But this doesn't mean that everything else the warlord does to you is consensual; all it means is that he's nicer to you than everyone else.

>When someone talks about the social contract, this is simply what they're referring to (1).

Yes, yes, we all know who John Rawls is. However, the defense of social contract theory which you've provided is actually not much like John Rawls's theory of justice at all. If you're going to condescendingly posture yourself as better educated than we stupid libertarians, at least be better educated.

>Claiming that you're not part of a larger social system because nobody presented you with a piece of paper is just a straw man argument, you understand it in your public and private behavior every day.

See: all above.

u/Eddie_M · 3 pointsr/publicdefenders

After doing this for a long time I have come to the conclusion that no "single" way is the best way. Take a little from everyone and fit it in to what works best for you and how you think.

If you get a chance read Terry McCarthy's book on cross. He's a lifelong PD and while he incorporates much of the Pozner and Dodd methods (and the 3 rules) he does it from the perspective of a defense attorney.

As for actually prepping crosses, for the last 5 years or so I have been using the Simple Mind app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmakertools.simplemindfree&hl=en

Rather then thinking about cross in a linear fashion, the simple mind app allows you to create flow charts so you can pivot to any topic without shuffling through papers and perhaps losing your place.



https://www.amazon.com/MacCarthy-Cross-Examination-Terence/dp/1590318862

u/Celektus · 3 pointsr/BreadTube

At least for Anarchists or other left-libertarians it should also be important to actually read up on some basic or even fundamental ethical texts given most political views and arguments are fundamentally rooted in morality (unless you're a orthodox Marxist or Monarchist). I'm sadly not familiar enough with applied ethics to link collections of arguments for specific ethical problems, but it's very important to know what broad system you're using to evaluate what's right or wrong to not contradict yourself.

At least a few very old texts will also be available for free somewhere on the internet like The Anarchist Library.

Some good intro books:

  • The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau
  • The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James and Stuart Rachels
  • Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn

    Some foundational texts and contemporary authors of every main view within normative ethics:

  • Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotles for Classic Virtue-Ethics. Martha Nussbaum would be a contemporary left-wing Virtue-Ethicist who has used Marx account of alienation to argue for Global Justice.
  • Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel (or Emmanuel) Kant for Classic Deontology. Kantianism is a popular system to argue for anti-statism I believe even though Kant himself was a classical liberal. Christine Korsgaard would be an example of a contemporary Kantian.
  • The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick for Classic Utilitarianism. People usually recommend Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, but most contemporary Ethicists believe his arguments for Utilitarianism suck. 2 other important writers have been R. M. Hare and G. E. Moore with very unique deviations from classic Utilitarianism. A contemporary writer would be Peter Singer. Utilitarianism is sometimes seemingly leading people away from Socialism, but this isn't necessarily the case.
  • Between Facts and Norms and other works by the contemporary Critical Theorist Jürgen Habermas may be particularly interesting to Neo-Marxists.
  • A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. I know Rawls is a famous liberal, but his work can still be interpreted to support further left Ideologies. In his later works like Justice as Fairness: A Restatement you can see him tending closer to Democratic Socialism.
  • Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche for... Nietzsche's very odd type of Egoism. His ethical work was especially influential to Anarchists such as Max Stirner, Emma Goldman or Murray Bookchin and also Accelerationists like Jean Baudrillard.
  • In case you think moralism and ethics is just bourgeois propaganda maybe read something on subjectivism like Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong by J. L. Mackie
  • Or if you want to hear a strong defense of objective morality read Moral Realism: A Defense by Russ Shafer-Landau orc
u/foxeylocks · 3 pointsr/LawSchool

I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Maybe-Excel-School-Exams/dp/0890897603

It was like a security blanket for me when I was a 1L. Also, I found it helpful to draft the “Rule” portion of the IRAC essay and add it to my outlines. So the first page of a topic had a box full of “rules.” Drafting that portion of an essay really helped score easy points on exams and saves time when you have an open-note exam! It also helps you solidify your understanding of the law.

Happy studies!

u/DrunkHacker · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

Three books I'd suggest, in the order I'd read them:

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek

Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick

Outside the libertarian canon, Rousseau's On the Social Contract and Rawls' A Theory of Justice should be on everyone's reading list. Rawls and Nozick are probably the two most influential political philosophers of the late 20th century and understanding their arguments about the justification of property rights and the original position are the ABCs of modern political debate.

u/Nora_Durst · 2 pointsr/CatholicDating

> My lsat was pretty good (175) but my gpa was only a 3.37, which makes me a splitter for most of the top schools. Do you think that's the sort of thing that comes up during interviews? Or is it something I should bring up myself to address? I don't have any real excuse, since my general academic performance was consistent throughout college as opposed to me falling ill or having a bad first semester or something.

Kudos on the high LSAT score! I honestly think you could see some serious scholarship money with that. I wouldn't bother bringing up the low GPA unless you're directly asked about it. What schools are you applying to?

> This is gonna be a bit of an odder one, but what is the number one thing you wish you had done before going to law school? I've got a solid 10 months or so before I trade all me free time to become a lawyer, and I definitely want to make the most of it.

Honestly, I think the best thing you could do is relax as much as possible. If you want to do something law-related to beef up your resume a little, you may want to consider doing some volunteer work at Christian Legal Clinics of Philadelphia or another legal clinic over the summer. When you begin applying to post-1L internship opportunities, every little bit helps. If you also have the time for some light reading, consider checking out Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams. Although I've personally never gotten around to reading it, I know other people who have raved about it.

u/jackatman · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

I'm found John Rawls' theory to be quite persuasive.

The essential bit is how would you structure society if you didn't know where in society you will be born into. The analogy I remember is making rules for a card game before you know the hand you will be dealt. It gets a little trickier when you ask what the point of the game is. One clear winner? No clear loser? Even distribution of points no matter what? The chance for even a shitty hand to win?

For the lazy.

u/Xb3am · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Published in 1850 but still very relevant today.

Bastiat also wrote Parable of the Broken Window and The Candlemaker's Petition.

u/Tangurena · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Utilitarianism says that the best action is one that increases the overall good. Rioting reduces "good" for lots of people (especially those who have their stuff destroyed or stolen) by reducing the overall "good" in society.

Some basic reading:
Utilitarianism and Other Essays.
On Liberty and Other Essays.
A Theory of Justice.

Utilitarianism is one of the major philosophies behind human/animal rights and abolition (of slavery). John Stuart Mill's writings have had a large impact on various political philosphies as well as science.

u/owheelj · 2 pointsr/IsItBullshit

Wikipedia suggests it's bullshit;

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

I guess looking at the Wikipedia stats, it's plausible that if you group countries by dominate religion then Muslim wins, but all the top countries are secular, rather than religion dominated, and Islam would only be ahead of those if you're counting them as Christian because of all the low scoring developing world Christian countries.

This book (and he has an essay somewhere with the basic facts) shows that countries that have the lowest religious participation rates have the highest life satisfaction, life expectancy, education rates, and per capita wealth.

https://www.amazon.com/Society-without-God-Religious-Contentment/dp/0814797237

u/Colyer · 2 pointsr/videos

This one. It's quite a bit more of a political philosophy book than an ethical one, so if he wrote more about ethics, I think it's elsewhere. This is probably most famous for his justification for income redistribution.

u/xaelyn · 2 pointsr/lawschooladmissions

Priorities, in order:

u/kneedragatl · 2 pointsr/LawSchool

This is all I read, easy read and gives you a good idea of the process.

Everyone else recommends Volkoh, but I barely cracked the cover though.

u/Popov_Caught_It · 2 pointsr/LawSchool
u/jub-jub-bird · 2 pointsr/AskALiberal

> I'm gonna read that book just to get a better idea of what exactly I'm advocating for.

LOL, not my intention to spread the ideas I disagree with. But it sounded like a thesis you would.

> Do we know this? I don't think we do

I think the evidence suggests this. And it makes sense to me that the lives of people who highly value self-reliance are going to generally be far better than those who don't share that value and who are perfectly content to be on the dole.

At the risk of going down a completely different rabbit trail my view is actually a little more complex since I DO think interdependence in the context of family and community is important and of great value. I'm all for Edmund Burke "little platoons" of family, church and local neighborhood. It is large impersonal institutions that reliably fail, they cannot know and love the individual, they cannot make the moral judgments that a loving parent, or an increasingly impatient neighbor might make when presented with yet another plea for next month's rent. I very much agree with the title of Hillary Clinton's book "It takes a village" I don't think she understood the full meaning of the proverb... since she turned it around to mean: "It take a large impersonal bureaucracy" which is NOT the same thing at all.

> If you have any other reading suggestions then I'll take a look. I don't want to become massively entrenched in my views

None of these are necessarily related to your discussion though they might touch on some similar topics.

I recently read Haidt's The Righteous Mind not actually a conservative book but one which is really interesting in terms of figuring out why liberals and conservatives talk past each other.

And there's always the conservative classics that you'll always get when people ask. A few personal favorites: Kirke's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom though technically he'd insist on calling himself as a "liberal" (By which he means a classical 19th century liberal) I liked Bastiate's The Law if you want an actual 19th century liberal. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Those last two are both relatively quick and easy reads.

And of course Sowell has written extensively on exactly this subject. I think Race and Economics was his first book so it may be a bit dated now.

Sadly I've not read that one nor his other books that seem most directly related to our discussion. Personally I've only read his Basic Economics and I read Race and Culture years ago which is somewhat related but about the impact of race, ethnicity and culture in an international setting. His ideas about the primacy of cultural capital in explaining group differences in economic capital are consistent but he's applying those concepts internationally in how various cultural groups have done economically as majorities, as minorities, migrants, conquers or conquered etc. it's been a while but I remembered more about the overseas Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia than about blacks in America.

u/ChancellorGobbles · 2 pointsr/LawSchool

In my school, as a 2L staffer, you are required to do lots of bluebooking, source verification and production related tasks + write a note or memo. It is 2-3 units. You need to put in some efforts, but no more than other 2-unit classes. You will learn how to pay attention to details, how to write academically (unfortunately, very different from professional legal writing) and become friends with lots of smart kids. There is a book that tells you more about law review experiences and academic legal writing: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Law-Review-Write-Competition/dp/1594605203

u/earlierson · 2 pointsr/LawSchool

The majority of the advice you'll get from this sub is different versions of "BE FREE, YOUNG GRASSHOPPER."

That being said, definitely enjoy yourself. When August rolls around, its time to start looking at syllabuses and getting your life together. But you should spend the time you have doing whatever makes you happy.

I read Getting to Maybe, I liked it. Not sure how useful it is, but... might be worth checking out.

u/bodhidharma6 · 2 pointsr/Civcraft

ttk a lot of what you wrote kind of circles around John Rawls' concept of the Veil of Ignorance as a methodology for determining what's "fair." Specifically the part about things seeming fair or unfair depending one whether you're a vault-builder or a vault-breaker. The Veil of Ignorance approach would mean you design the rules assuming nothing about which position or role you would assume in the outcome, and for maximum fairness assume yourself to be the least-advantaged. That's what you essentially did with the griefer scenario.

>Had a quote from the article here but autowikibot made it redundant

Read some Rawls, homey. You seem largely on-board with parts of his outlook already and it might interest you to read the most-cited formulation of it.

u/JudgeBastiat · 2 pointsr/Libertarian
u/tonyb486 · 2 pointsr/LawSchool
u/floormonkey · 2 pointsr/LawSchool

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Appellate-Advocacy-Coursebook/dp/1454830964

I like this one. We used in in a practicum, and I use it for appellate style brief writing and moot prep.

u/rhino369 · 2 pointsr/LawSchool

Buy this book now (either on kindle, kindle app on your tablet, or next day shipping). http://www.amazon.com/Getting-To-Maybe-Excel-School/dp/0890897603

It's a good explanation about how to approach an issue-spotter law exam.

u/SargeantSpike · 2 pointsr/atheism

>What non-religious society has ever thrived?

Ever heard of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway?

>The fact is that there are two theories on what happens when you remove religion from society

Both of these theories are simplistic, silly, and unsupported by the data. You're presenting what's called a false dilemma. Both choices are wrong. There are countless factors besides religion that determine the success or failure of a society.

>The Soviet Union? North Korea? Cubans?

Irrelevant for many reasons, but here's one: You said societies inevitably fail without religion. Naming a few examples of failed societies doesn't prove your thesis. However, finding even one counter-example does disprove it. Which I've done.

>The Christian idea is that you lose the moral basis and society collapses

Except I've just given you three examples that directly contradict your theory.

>your claim that my pointing out the importance of Machievelli to political discourse is "stupid"

It is stupid. It's a fallacious appeal to authority. And there are real-life societies that disprove his thesis. You can even get in an airplane and fly to those places, and see with your own eyes that he's wrong.

Pro-tip: if a book says one thing, and reality says another, the book is wrong. Likewise, if a map says one thing and the terrain says another, it's the map that's wrong. (I only mention this, because at this point I can see you driving off a cliff because "muh GPS sed a Walmart was der."

>You have a LOT of learning to do before you can even begin to have an intelligent conversation about religion and politics.

Guess I should burn my degrees then, eh? You truly are a walking poster child for the Dunning-Krueger Effect.

u/BlunderLikeARicochet · 2 pointsr/atheism

My go-to example is Norway, which, depending on how you parse poll responses, is possibly the most atheistic country in the world.

u/ineedabulldog · 1 pointr/LawSchool

>I wrote literally the bare-minimum on each exam

This tells you exactly what you need to fix. That's a good thing! Many people do not recognize what went wrong and continue to flounder. At least while you're in law school, do not ever do this again (unless given a word count limit or your professor explicitly requests the minimum). Obviously, don't just recite your outline or word vomit all over the page, but you should be fully and exhaustively explaining your entire analysis from the beginning. It will seem pointless, but you will need to bring up rules and/or cases just for the act of explaining why they are distinguishable or inapplicable (this supports your argument, while attacking the counter). I would suggest you take a look at Getting to Maybe.

u/mavnorman · 1 pointr/atheism

The sociologist Phil Zuckerman has written a book based on his experiences in Scandinavian countries. Here's a short interview about the book.

However, it's worth emphasizing that almost all scholars think that a more functional society leads to less religion. There's hardly any evidence that less religion will lead to more functional societies.

u/recycledciv · 1 pointr/ProtectAndServe
u/carlitosrosario · 1 pointr/law

I just finished law school. Try getting a book. I'm in California, so I don't know how Iceland's law school differs. I liked law school confidential: http://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Confidential-Complete-Experience/dp/031224309X

Also, take as many practice tests as you can. When I took the bar, I took dozens of practice tests for each subject. I wish I had done more when in school.

Making friends, and other advice on here is also very true.

u/CrosseyedAndPainless · 1 pointr/law

Get him this book so he can ace all his exams first year.

u/Ernge · 1 pointr/law

Read Law School Confidential. It will give you a look at the good, bad, and ugly of law school and the first few years of practice.

Also, read this blog post by The Criminal Lawyer - "Is Law School Right for You?". While it was posted on a blog predominately about criminal law, it is still true for any specialization that you may be thinking about pursuing.

u/Honestly_ · 1 pointr/law

I remember reading this book a decade ago and it pretty much covered what law school and the early years of practice were like --particularly if you're aiming at big law. It's a little on the alarmist side, but I don't think that's a bad thing for people considering the profession.

u/ruforealz · 1 pointr/LawSchool

I'd read this book or something similar (the guy who mentioned the 1L guide at top-law-schools may have the same info).

Hell if you want I can send you my copy of that book if you want.

It gives you insight into what to expect each year and fills you in on some basic stuff that you are just supposed to intuit once you get there.

u/BOLDtv · 1 pointr/LawSchool

From my experience (Giles Rich IP) most moot courts and oral arguments follow a specific structure that you should base your argument on.

Introduction
Roadmap
Argument 1
Argument 2
etc.
Conclusion

Typically you want to prepare for questions from the bench. Practice being deferential to the bench. You get asked a question, the first words should be: "No/Yes, Your Honor . . . " or "I don't know your honor, may I submit a supplemental brief." The introduction and conclusion should be memorized. A strong trial notebook will help, but something simple like a manila folder and note cards taped on the covers for cases, references to the record, etc.

I cannot emphasize how structure based it is. You need to do it the way they want to for the points.
This book will get you far. A lot of people get DQ'd or lose points on poor briefs. Look at your local rules and follow them precisely. There are a lot of nuances a coach could help with.

Lastly, ask your professors or look for local coaches. A lot of people might offer to coach a team since it looks good for them too.

u/vaderskid · 1 pointr/slavelabour

Need the following:

​

https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Like-Lawyer-Time-Saving-Strategies/dp/1611631106

​

Thanks!

u/A_person_in_a_place · 1 pointr/religion

> In my science classes in high school

Well, that would be an important place to learn about the scientific method. Glad you were taught it in science classes...

"I think part if the problem is the human mind isn't fully developed until it's mid-twenties, and philosophy and religous texts can be hard reads."

Eh, supposedly 25 is when it is fully developed. I think that childhood is being extended too much. In reality, people grew up way faster in the past. Even though the brain may technically fully develop at 25, I think people should be considered adults earlier than that. Would be highly problematic if we tried saying that someone is not legally an adult until 25. Besides, plenty of people have kids read the bible. I do not see why children could not understand religious and philosophical concepts. Might be helpful if the main tenants and philosophical ideas were taught but maybe not focusing on having kids read the original texts so much (particularly for philosophy... philosophers were awful writers in plenty of cases).

Oh, and regarding the relativistic morality comment, I think that it is a myth that religion gets you "objective" morality. Consider all of the different interpretations of the bible, christianity, islam, etc. I read the bible and it's quite easy to cherry pick what you consider to be literal, metaphorical, etc. People do it all the time. People justified (some still do) slavery using the bible and they also tried using the bible to argue against it. Some people overlook parts of the bible (I think there are like 8 of them) that explicitly condemn men having sex with men. Ultimately, religion provides some constraints on morality, but so does philosophy. Morality changes over time either way (dramatically) with or without religion and on the important issues, most people don't go around killing random people because they simply don't want to (same goes for stealing, raping, assaulting people, etc).

"Some things that are mostly overlooked in mainstream culture and schools are:

the power of selflessness empathy and compassion marriage and family values justice, love and charity tolerance happiness and peace"

I disagree. I think those things are hammered into us. I have no interest in marriage or "family values" and I feel inundated with such things. I wish there was less of it since we have waaaaay too many people on the earth (apparently will reach 9 BILLION in my lifetime). I also think that not everyone is prepared to be in a long term relationship or have children. If you don't want such things, I think it is a bad idea to be pressured into it. Let's not forget that Jesus and his disciples supposedly left family life behind anyway :-)

"the power of selflessness empathy and compassion marriage and family values justice, love and charity tolerance happiness and peace"

You know... looking over that list again... It's funny to me how the Republican Party in the USA supposedly is Christian, but they only really promote marriage, family values (their version), justice (their version) and happiness (their version). Otherwise, both Democrats and Republicans promote war. Republicans do not seem to speak much about tolerance. They generally focus on trickle down economics (not helping the poor).

But regardless of all of that, I highly recommend checking out the book Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by soiologist Phil Zuckerman https://www.amazon.com/Society-without-God-Religious-Contentment/dp/0814797237 Scandinavian countries that have a lot of nonreligious people have way more help for the poor, plenty of compassion, a focus on helping everyone be happier (and Denmark has repeatedly been the happiest country in surveys), they still have family values, they are tolerant, plenty of empathy, very community oriented, peaceful, etc. If you look at the most religious countries (including the USA, which is actually relatively religious compared to plenty of countries), there is more violence and oppression.

Look at the middle east for a glimpse into the past and how awful it was to live in a theocracy. In Saudi Arabia, atheists can be beheaded publicly just for being atheists. There are morality police (or at least there were recently). Women and men can be stopped if they're walking together to ask why they are together. Women can't let their skin on their leg show. I read the bible and I found it to be a horrible text. The old testament was filled with nonsense about sacrifice, plenty of killing, genocide, rape, war... much of it done by "god" himself. Then, the new testament is supposed to be "better" because god had his own son killed in order to make it so that humans didn't need to perform sacrifices anymore... the symbol of the religion is a human sacrifice (jesus)... that's not a "family value" that I care for and I think we can do better. It made sense for people who believed in the importance of "burnt offerings" so much that the term is mentioned to a nauseating degree in the old testament. To me? I have never performed a sacrifice, so it isn't amazing news to me that "hey! did you hear the good news!!!??? God had jesus sacrificed so that all those sacrifices don't need to be performed anymore to appease god!!!"

I just watched a video on this book "Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression" by Hector A. Garcia. https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-God-Psychology-Religious-Oppression/dp/1633880206/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=alpha+god&qid=1558237288&s=books&sr=1-1 I plan on reading it. Sounds really interesting. Take care.

u/treetops_rising · 1 pointr/lawschooladmissions

I checked this one out from the library, it was a pretty good starting point.

https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116

u/Gronners · 1 pointr/uklaw

What about Law? by by Catherine Barnard, Janet O'Sullivan and Graham Virgo

u/melosaur · 1 pointr/publicdefenders

I didn't have any specific ones in mind (I'm trying to find a great little book that is out of print but I have a pdf in my office somewhere), but MacCarthy on Cross-Examination appears well-reviewed on Amazon so I might pick it up myself: http://www.amazon.com/MacCarthy-Cross-Examination-Terence/dp/1590318862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452780708&sr=8-1&keywords=cross-examination

u/perfect_edge13 · 1 pointr/books
u/brownie_face · 1 pointr/law
u/Captain-Vimes · 1 pointr/LawSchool

I'm in a similar position (0L) so I can't speak on how much it compares to the law school class but I've just started doing a chapter of this each week and it seems to be really helpful.

u/thereal_joe · 1 pointr/guns

Yeah, I'm from California. There is actually nothing that states that a rebuilt mag has to have any original parts, you just have to end up with the same number of assembled mags you started with.

For California Gunny's I really recommend this.

PS, shit has it been a year already? Didn't even notice!

u/Inside_Tomato · 1 pointr/LawSchool

Hey, first of, congrats on getting into college! Second, breathe! You got time.

Now, to answer your questions:

First Question

If you are asking about what's the best school to attend in order to go to law school, I don't have any advice there. I went to UCLA and got into law school but I have heard of people going to community colleges, transferring to UCLA, and then going to Harvard Law School. So I don't know.

But if you are asking about which major you should choose in order to go to law school, my advice is that you don't need to a specific major (i.e. political science) to get in law school.

Case in point: I was a political science major during my first 2 years in college and I was miserable. I kept hanging in there because I thought that's what I needed to get into law school. Lies! I switched to a major I seriously enjoyed and graduated with a decent GPA but which could have been higher had I not spent time doubting myself.

Lesson: just do well. That's the only requirement you have during undergrad. Do well. Get a high GPA and study for your LSAT - those two will give you options when you start applying to law schools.

Second Question

You will learn all of the skills that you will need to succeed in law school in law school. But it doesn't hurt to get a head start the summer prior to law school. But to get a head start, you need to know the skills they are going to teach you in law school. Below are some of the skills they should teach you or you should learn in law school:

(a) How to read cases - sorry, I don't have a book to recommend for this one

(b) How to write case briefs - sorry, no resources here either

(c) How to cite cases and other sources - https://masteringthebluebook.com/ is what I would suggest. Law schools don't expect you to know how to cite anything when you start law school. Buuttt, I honestly wish I knew about this resource during my first year (1L year). Knowing how to cite cases, secondary sources, e.t.c. is a must. So why not get a head start? : ) You might end up impressing your legal writing teacher and getting on law review. (But no pressure).

(d) How to write memorandums in which you (1) state what the legal issue is; (2) provide your client's facts; (3) state the relevant legal rule (which you should have gotten from reading cases); and (4) analyze and then make an argument about how that legal rule applies to your client's situation

So the above is a list of some of the skills you ultimately want to have learned in law school. It is the foundation.

But what determines your grade in law school is not just the foundation but how well you can apply the law to a set of facts and under time constraints. I am talking about the exam. In law school, one exam per class is the norm though some professors may have midterms.

Law School Exams

I would recommend checking out this book --- Getting to Maybe: How to Excel in Law School Exams -- if you want to learn how to do well in law schools exams. Below is the link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890897603/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

To Summarize

(1) Choose a major you like and do well in that major and study for the LSAT!

(2) You can (if you want) get a head start before law school but you need to know what skills they will be testing you on and find resources that will help you build those skills.

u/-10- · -5 pointsr/LawSchool

LOL, you will be ahead of the poli sci and history majors without doing anything. Those undergrad programs do not prepare you for law school in any special or helpful way. Whatever your "quantitative major" is, you will be better equipped to succeed in law school because you have more experience with thinking logically and confidently, consistently, and rigorously applying rules to a set of facts/inputs.

If you really want a recommendation for how to prep for law school as a 0L, read Getting to Maybe in the summer before you start.