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The Law and Ethics of Lawyering
This casebook provides an overview of the wide range of legal and ethical issues facing lawyers in practice. As did prior editions, the Fifth Edition integrates discussion of the ABA's Model Rules, the ALI's Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, as well as case law, statutory law, and regulatory law governing lawyers. Many sections of the book are expanded and updated, including discovery abuse, ethics in electronic discovery, advertising and the Internet, simultaneous representation of corporations and officers, prosecutorial misconduct, and legal advising by government lawyers.
1340 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1991
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April 23, 2021
Garbage.
Typically law school textbooks provide 3-4 items: cases/excerpts/statutes, the actual law to learn (yes, sometimes it's good not to require "extracting" the law from 150 year old cases), context for the cases/law, and (in the good ones) problems/opportunities to apply what the reader learns. I also think the authors' words should provide clarity rather than obfuscation.
This textbook does none of those right. I'll try to give three examples that irritated the hell out of me:
Cases are artificially long and complicated in ways that have nothing to do with the reason for their selection. For example, a case about client confidentiality will go on for 15 pages about financial security regulations. My best textbooks have abridged cases so that the bulk of the reading is about the topic itself. Judges must deal with all claims; a textbook does not. I also got the sense that the cases were selected because of the authors' involvement with those cases rather than for their aptness to the issue.
When referring to the Model Rules or the Restatement, the authors would never include the language of the rule itself, just the citation. In combination with the paragraph of questions below, this became incredibly irritating to read. I can look up the rule, dude, but don't lose the flow of reading by making me stop, pick up another book, read it, then have to go back and remember what you were talking about. I don't care THAT MUCH about the point...particularly when they do this repeatedly throughout a paragraph. Basically, they unnecessarily make it harder to read.
I found the "paragraph of questions" the most annoying feature. The authors will throw in a paragraph here and there, with 12-15 questions (seriously, not a period in sight) in rapid succession. I think the expectation is that you'd go, one by one, thinking through the issue or reviewing the case. But a) they don't have any right answers, and b) they're so...superficially placed (?) that I never stopped to do them. If you want me to think through an issue or spend some time applying what I just learned, make it an actual problem to solve. After each paragraph of questions, the authors move on. That is, they don't provide context through which you could answer the question or check your reasoning. I do not mind textbooks that provide me questions to think through. I mind textbooks that do so flippantly.
The writing choices ended up causing more confusion than just reading the MRPC, the Restatement, and selected cases would have been. I'm not sure why my professor chose this textbook, but even he grew frustrated with it at times.
If you're required to read this, I'd recommend trying to find a free version or not making any markings so you can resell it.
Typically law school textbooks provide 3-4 items: cases/excerpts/statutes, the actual law to learn (yes, sometimes it's good not to require "extracting" the law from 150 year old cases), context for the cases/law, and (in the good ones) problems/opportunities to apply what the reader learns. I also think the authors' words should provide clarity rather than obfuscation.
This textbook does none of those right. I'll try to give three examples that irritated the hell out of me:
Cases are artificially long and complicated in ways that have nothing to do with the reason for their selection. For example, a case about client confidentiality will go on for 15 pages about financial security regulations. My best textbooks have abridged cases so that the bulk of the reading is about the topic itself. Judges must deal with all claims; a textbook does not. I also got the sense that the cases were selected because of the authors' involvement with those cases rather than for their aptness to the issue.
When referring to the Model Rules or the Restatement, the authors would never include the language of the rule itself, just the citation. In combination with the paragraph of questions below, this became incredibly irritating to read. I can look up the rule, dude, but don't lose the flow of reading by making me stop, pick up another book, read it, then have to go back and remember what you were talking about. I don't care THAT MUCH about the point...particularly when they do this repeatedly throughout a paragraph. Basically, they unnecessarily make it harder to read.
I found the "paragraph of questions" the most annoying feature. The authors will throw in a paragraph here and there, with 12-15 questions (seriously, not a period in sight) in rapid succession. I think the expectation is that you'd go, one by one, thinking through the issue or reviewing the case. But a) they don't have any right answers, and b) they're so...superficially placed (?) that I never stopped to do them. If you want me to think through an issue or spend some time applying what I just learned, make it an actual problem to solve. After each paragraph of questions, the authors move on. That is, they don't provide context through which you could answer the question or check your reasoning. I do not mind textbooks that provide me questions to think through. I mind textbooks that do so flippantly.
The writing choices ended up causing more confusion than just reading the MRPC, the Restatement, and selected cases would have been. I'm not sure why my professor chose this textbook, but even he grew frustrated with it at times.
If you're required to read this, I'd recommend trying to find a free version or not making any markings so you can resell it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review