(Part 2) Top products from r/law

I really enjoyed A People's History of the Supreme Court by Peter H. Irons. Here's the synopsis

"Beginning with the debates over judicial power in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to controversial rulings on slavery, racial segregation, free speech, school prayer, abortion, and gay rights, constitutional scholar Peter Irons offers a penetrating look at the highest court in the land. Here are revealing sketches of every justice from John Jay to Stephen Breyer, as well as portraits of such legal giants as John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Earl Warren, and Thurgood Marshall. Astute, provocative, and extremely accessible, A People's History of the Supreme Court illuminates and pays tribute to a system of justice that both reflects and parallels our country's remarkable legal history."

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Supreme-Court-OurConstitution/dp/0143037382

I would recommend brushing up on American History. That was the one thing I played catch-up on. It’s amazing how much it helps when reading cases. The historical context and political climate will often help you make sense of a ruling that otherwise seems completely arbitrary. I spent much of my “free” time reading books about historical events and found it to be very helpful. If you want books that are law related, but not necessarily about law, I loved The Nine and Ivy Briefs. Don't worry too much about knowing legal stuff beforehand, you don't want to start school burnt out and stressed out, let your professors take care of that for you.

I will say first that lawyers don't necessarily want law-based books. I know I've gotten my fair share of law-based books that just went on the shelf unread.

That said, I do like a couple.

The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance. Book of goofy laws. Unlike most books of this sort, it's well researched and cited. The writing is sharp and funny.

Law of Superheroes A thought-experiment type book. If your girl enjoys superheroes (which she well may not), it's a fun read.

For other non-law related recommendations, probably go to /r/books instead of /r/law

(NOTE: I'm a Law Student, not an attorney.... so of course that means I know everything)

A filler course I had to take this last semester was on opening your own practice. The main assignment was to write up a business plan hitting the main points with a 1 year and 5 year budget (the budget being the really important part).

We used this text, which the professor liked but I found to be a tad out of date. Still, it hits the high notes and what you should at least be considering. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590312473


Insurance is cheap. I was quoted a rough number of $800 for the first year and about a 20% increase for the next few years capping at around $2500 by the fifth or six year. This was a generic practice and different disciplines might vary a bit. Also consider insurance for your office (as in, clients might slip and fall on ice or the rug). And don't forget about health insurance for yourself. Working for yourself means no sick days, so access to a good doctor will be useful.


Check for local bars in addition to the state bar. The local bar in my area is only another $150/year and has enough free CLE's to cover the bulk of what my state requires every year, if not all. Your state may be similar.

For my class, I argued that using public law libraries and fastcase (Free subscription with bar membership in my state) was enough to start until I figure out if I need Westlaw or Lexis Nexis. But that's another cost to remember.


Filing cabinet's, office equipment, and storage concerns should be considered as you'll have paperwork that you need to hold onto long term until you shred everything.


Consider separate banks for your business, iolta, and personal accounts for safety reasons.


Postage will be a bitch. Be sure to budget for stamps and envelopes (consider a postage meter). Don't forget that you may need access to a fax machine. Also, you may need a beast of a printer and lots of toner.


Virtual Receptionists (eg: Ruby Receptionists) are actually pretty reasonably priced and can add a decent professional polish.


Get some templates for intake forms, retainer forms, and related. Lawyer Mutual has some templates online you can work from.


Skimming over what I submitted, those were the main points the professor was hammering. You'll be a Sole Proprietorship at first, but S Corp might be reasonable after a few years.

Do you want to read CASES or do you want to learn about the entirety of an area of LAW?

If you are more interested in the "whole" view of a certain area of law, I would recommend reading a treatise or something on an area you're interested in. Cases alone are interesting somewhat, but usually they are just a smaller piece of a much bigger topic. It would be like trying to learn about a forest by just studying one tree.

For example if you like Law and Order you probably are interested in criminal law. A book like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Loewys-Criminal-Nutshell-West-Publishing/dp/0314194967/

Would give you a very thorough understanding of criminal law as a whole. Case by case reading might help you understand certain particulars (like the procedure for holding someone in jail in order to pay off outstanding fines) but without being able to see the whole picture it's going to seem really meaningless and confusing.

As many others have noted, bar exam summer isn't exactly a great time to expand your knowledge of the law outside of the review process. So I'd strongly consider suspending your jurisprudential inquiries until after July. Or, at least, being okay if you don't make much progress on the summer reading.

Here is an excellent reading list:

• Alexy, The Argument from Injustice
  
• Dworkin, Law’s Empire
  
• Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights
  
• Fuller, The Morality of Law
  
• Hart, The Concept of Law
  
• Rawls, A Theory of Justice
  
• Rawls, Political Liberalism
  
• Simmonds, Law as a Moral Idea
  
  I'd probably add Holmes' "The Common Law" to that.
  
  And, if you want more breadth, try this compilation of sources
  
  I read both Friedman's first and second books, which were much simpler than the jurisprudential tomes above. But because they're about the history of the law, they're VERY LIKELY to mix things up for the bar exam.
  
  Again, I'd listen to everyone else here, and stay away from real jurisprudential inquiry. Stick with light and silly law-y things (e.g., Jeffrey Toobin) or quick reads (Michael Lewis). Better: don't plan to read much about the law.

>Can any of you give some advice on some books that a young teen could look into to learn more about the profession and what's involved with it, what types of things she would be studying and such?

It might be a bit advanced for a 13 year old, but A Civil Action is a pretty interesting non-fiction read. It discusses the experience of a litigator in a major trial and the various trials and tribulations that he goes through. I don't remember anything in there that would be inappropriate for a teenager and it is used in high school curriculum.

It might be a bit advanced for an average 13-year-old, but I doubt that an average 13-year-old is actively trying to be a lawyer.

Collapse of the American Criminal Justice System. It blew me away, mostly because the author offers a unique perspective on how we ended up with the criminal justice system we do. It is more unique and in-depth than many of the more liberal critiques of the system. It made me appreciate the value of democratic institutions, of local control, of true justice.

Relax for the summer, it'll be the last chance you get for a while. If you're the type that simply must do something (as I was) then I recommend reading Getting to Maybe. Much of it is pretty common sense but you might find it useful.

Peter Iron's People's History of the Supreme Court for the real history of the law, and Kafka's Metamorphosis for what it feels like to be a law student.

You might be interested in this book, What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said, where a "court" of nine legal scholars write opinions that they felt better expressed the rationale the court should have adopted rather than what it did say.

Are you wanting to read substantive legal materials (e.g., what does the First Amendment say?) or about the history of law, or biographies of famous or interesting lawyers, or are you looking for information about what the practice of law is like?

"A Civil Action" might be a reasonable start. http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Action-Jonathan-Harr/dp/0679772677/

Are you assuming that there haven't been large demographic shifts in the past 20-30 years where the American populace have sorted themselves along common areas of culture? Journalists and political science PhDs write books about this sort of thing (for example: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-America/dp/0547237723).

The people of the Northern Rocky Mountain states are substantively different from Californians, with different value sets, economic ideas, etc. How do you guarantee that decisions that affect those states aren't afflicted with a California flavor that is distasteful to those non-Californians?

I really enjoyed reading A History of American Law followed by American Law in the Twentieth Century, both by Lawrence Friedman of Stanford Law School.

More people should read this book before even taking the LSAT. Would save a lot of heartache to a lot of people.

More like 2 weeks.

https://www.amazon.com/Mueller-Report-Special-Counsel-Collusion-ebook/dp/B07P67QXGN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mueller+report&qid=1555428409&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Mueller-Report-Washington-Post-ebook/dp/B07PB76691/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=mueller+report&qid=1555428464&s=gateway&sr=8-2

http://myshingle.com/

The creator of the website wrote a good book on the subject, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Choice-2011-2012-Lawyer-Resources/dp/0940675625

I’ve always been a fan of the Nutshell series. The fifth edition is the current one: https://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Nutshell-Nutshells-Arnold-Loewy/dp/0314194967/ref=nodl_

Keep in mind that when you get material on criminal law, you are just getting the statutory construction/interpretation of the black letter law. To fully under the system, you also need to delve in evidence, criminal procedure, and Constitutional law (sometimes at advanced levels and multiple jurisdictions).

For entertainment, the best TV show ever was the original Law & Order. The writers would take two or three real cases that were similar and mash them together for each episode. It got a little scary when I could start naming the cases an episode was based on.

• Typography for Lawyers.
  
  
• The Winning Brief.
  
  
• Legal Writing in Plain English.
  
  Also, get a subscription to the Chicago Manual of Style online. Look up every stylistic question you come across and make no assumptions.

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

Don't Go To Law School (Unless)

Check out my book: The Law of Superheroes.

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Supreme-Court-OurConstitution/dp/0143037382/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543117844&sr=1-2&keywords=people%27s+history+of+the+supreme+court

I'll second (or third) Foonberg. You can skip the technology section and just look on Lawyerist or a similar site for suggestions on tech.

I haven't read it yet, but I've heard that [Carolyn Elefant's book] (http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Choice-2011-2012-Lawyer-Resources/dp/0940675625/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) is basically a modern day version of Foonberg.

Our class got this book during orientation.

The process is the punishment.

Recommended (and fascinating) reading.

Courtroom 302

Yes, I agree. Speaking from personal experience, when I interned in a Texas District Atty's office during law school this sort of evidence was nearly always suppressed, often by the DA unilaterally through dismissal. Our advice to security guards was keep them on the scene voluntarily and wait for cops. Our scenarios usually involved guards catching people smoking marijuana and then finding the rest of the stuff in their pockets.

Also I think it is not just the courts that didn't want to let this guy go, the DA apparently wanted this case pretty bad. They did file an interlocutory appeal, those are pretty rare except in important cases. Most of the times these decisions to appeal or prosecute are based on the non-admissable evidence, such as character and priors.

Which leads me to suggest this book. That book summarizes the practical effects, you get your contraband confiscated, you spend a night in jail, you get an arrest record, you (possibly) pay a lawyer and then your case gets dismissed. The process is the punishment.

• The Nine
  
• Gideon's Trumpet
  
• Make No Law
  
• Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
  
  >What about readings like The Federalist Papers
  
  Don't be that guy. Seriously.

I can't imagine how I would have read a law book during bar study (I went with A Song of Ice and Fire), but I'm really enjoying The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by the late Harvard and UVA law prof William Stuntz. It's a really engaging discussion of the history of our criminal system and some of the factors that led to its current state. Most people who write about this come from either a hard left or libertarian viewpoint, but Stuntz is very thoughtful and balanced in his discussion.

> You're fooling yourself if you think that's the primary issue.

And yet, report after report shows that geographical self-sorting is the number one driver. ^123

> No one is debating compactness as the main problem that creates gerrymandering. The issue is political lines drawn to minimize Democratic voters.

And yet, here you are doing exactly that.

A couple of things you may not understanding:

1. Prosecutors are bureaucrats who work in big organizations and at the state/county level, the person at the top is elected.
   
   
2. They answer to someone. Yes, "they" have discretion but does the individual pushing the paper? Depends. Felonies are harder to make go away than misdemeanors. Indictments for felonies harder still. Crimes against people with a victim, probably harder again.
   
   
3. Caseloads are usually overflowing. The first "screen" any prosecutor is going to make is: Can I prove this case? Is there even a case there? Plea bargaining is the grease that keeps the machine running.
   
   
4. I found this book to be very helpful in giving a "worms eye" view of the system through one criminal courtroom.
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Courtroom-302-American-Criminal-Courthouse/dp/0679752064
   
   
5. Why is the prison population growing? Why does the U.S. imprison more people per-capita than any other or most other countries in the world? Mandatory minimums? Private prisons lobbying for stiffer penalties? Three strikes your out? There's a lot of culprits.

> As an aside, it's generally impolite to proffer accusatory statements, then say "let's have a civilized discussion." It is, however, ironic.

I apologize, it was 6am and I was probably far too tired to be using reddit... Had yet to even open my 1st red bull of the day.

Re Source (1) I don't own the book so I can't really comment on it :)

Re Source (2) This guys is really, REALLY out there... he seems to want to play both sides of the ball in order to get more clients. It's the women's fault for filling them and lieing, it's the states fault for taking away your kids, how come no one cares about the men, NO ONE FOLLOWS THE LAW. He then gets his legal license suspended for helping a client kidnap her daughter and not report it to the court, and then as she is lieing in front of the judge he doesn't correct her or bring it to the courts attention. Source.

Every source in his article links to another site that somehow is related to each other and none from a reputable non-issue related site. Even where he quotes people, he doesn't quote anything that can be proven he quotes another book that said person X said this. He backs it up with what happened in a hearing with a judge, yet there is no way to fact check it. Hell if this really happened all he had to do was get the court transcription and he would have some proof instead he makes it so you have to believe what he says.

That all being said, he states what he has heard a lot, but no facts. The whole argument that Restraining Orders are just used by women to attack men is false, we all know that because there are so many cooperated cases. The argument that women are to blame just as much as men are when a physical altercation occurs blows my mind.

As a male growing up I was always told that you do not hit a women. I have never once been in a situation where I felt I needed to (or ever did) no matter what I was told because I would likely send one to the hospital or worse. I bounced for a number of years having to break up girl fights when the happened and have had women attack me. I was always able to either resolve the issue or remove myself from the issue without having to raise my hand in anger. Why bring this up you ask, because pretty much every site you have linked too is all about 'mens rights' and how they are being trampled on by women.

Are there people that are abusing the system, I am sure there are. But in order for a system to be broken there has to some type of evidence that it is. The argument of all these people say that there is a problem means jack to anyone but those who agree with what they are saying.

By all means if there is proof of an issue then I will agree things need to be done, however just repeating the same biased crap that others say will get the same response from me... bring me the raw numbers.