Introduction to Law and Legal Skills in South Africa, Second Edition, offers an inspiring, progressive and immersive introduction to the study of South African law, for students who are beginning a programme of legal studies. The text offers an introduction to South African legal history and the structure of the South African legal system, and an orientation to key areas of substantive law. Thoroughly revised and updated, this second edition offers an inclusive, decolonised approach, engaging readers to learn about law with a purposeful and critical perspective that foregrounds social justice and diversity. Introduction to Law and Legal Skills in South Africa is designed to effectively advance the development of knowledge and skills through applied learning and immersion within context. The text provides a solid and innovative foundation for the development of crucial, empowering skills, including reading of legal material, legal writing, legal research, legal problem solving, a nalysis, reasoning, and critical thinking. To ensure clarity and accessibility to a diverse readership, this second edition is developed with the input of specialised language practitioners and student readers. The text serves to empower aspirant readers, and provides a valuable teaching resource for lecturers.

The Ultimate Logbook for Ease of Use and Client Privacy As a notary, you need an easy way to keep track of your clients and documents, but most notary logbooks out there just aren't quite right. The boxes are too small, or there are too many entries crammed on a page, making it difficult to use and even more difficult to keep your clients' privacy intact. The carefully designed and thoroughly tested layout in this logbook addresses all of these problems and more, making it the ultimate tool for your notary business. Valid in all 50 states and offering features like large type, oversized entry boxes, layflat binding, and just one entry per page, this logbook makes sure both you and your clients' needs are acknowledged and addressed.

Technology is everywhere. Its presence is undeniable. The legal industry, steeped in history and tradition, is not immune to the changes brought about by technological advancement. No facet of the legal industry can escape or ignore the increasingly important role of technology in the practice of law. Yet, technology can overwhelm, confuse, or downright intimidate many. By reading and using the insights shared in this title, learn how to reconcile technology's inescapable presence with the fear of the unknown it often brings about. Edited by Colin S. Levy, a well-known legal tech influencer and advocate, Handbook of Legal Tech provides guidance from many of the leading figures within the legal tech space on the different parts of law practice being enhanced and improved by technology. Each chapter covers a key area of legal tech, including automation, contract management, blockchain, use of artificial intelligence, and legal analytics, and contains first-hand insights into the development and adoption of legal technology and actionable data around best uses for different types of legal technologies. Legal ethics and the future of legal tech are also explored. This book is aimed at lawyers both in-house and in private practice globally who have an interest in legal tech and wish to learn more about how it will impact and enhance their work. In this age driven by data and technology, ignoring technology is at your definitive peril. Get up to speed with this engaging and enlightening book on the intersection of the legal industry and the world of technology.

This book covers legal dissertation level research, embracing both LL.B. and the specific demands of LL.M. dissertations. Adopting a highly practical approach, this book shows the reader how to research and write a dissertation, covering the various stages - planning, identifying key issues, utilising the appropriate research methods, time management issues, and managing one's supervision. KEY FEATURES * Shows how to avoid common stylistic and substantive pitfalls * Discusses the character and pros and cons of adopting law and policy methods for defining the issues and conducting legal research - including black letter, socio-legal, interpretive, experiential * A running example throughout the text illustrates the various points made in each section and provides continuity

Many legal writing texts emphasize how one writes; this book is unique because it also focuses on why one writes. Every chapter challenges the reader to write to achieve a strategic objective. Each assignment has been carefully considered by the authors, and fully vetted to simulate the decision-making involved in the preparation of important legal writing, whether in a general counsel's office, a law office, a government attorney's office, or a judge's chambers. Simply put, the authors' approach is that effective legal writing does not exist in a vacuum. This book provides practical assignments that teach the student that the best legal writing is not an end in itself, but a means to a larger strategic objective.

This book considers how law is always enacted, or performed, in ways that can be analyzed in relation to fiction, theatre, and other dramatic forms. Of necessity, lawyers and judges need to devise techniques to make rules respond situationally. The performance of law supplements, or it extends the reach of, the law-as-written. And, in this respect, the act of lawyering is in many ways an instantiation of acts often associated with, for example, literature and the plastic and performing arts. Combining legal theory and legal practice, this book maintains that the modes of enquiry found in, and applied to, novels, paintings, and plays can help us understand how things like legal arguments and trials work-or don't. As such, and through the examination of a wide range of both historical and fictional legal cases, the book pursues an interdisciplinary analysis of how law is performed; and, moreover, how legal performances can be accomplished ethically. This book will appeal to scholars and students in sociolegal studies, legal theory, and jurisprudence, as well as those teaching and training in legal practice.

Although legal innovation is critical for law firms, with clients pushing for more efficient, cost-effective, and automated services, very little has been written about how to drive successful enterprise-wide transformation efforts. As innovation and legal operations functions proliferate globally, Nicola Shaver has written the first definitive book to guide legal professionals through setting up an effective innovation function and driving successful culture change and initiatives across a legal organization. In The Handbook for Legal Innovation, Shaver, the 2020 ILTA Legal Innovation Leader of the Year and a College of Law Practice Management Fellow, outlines how to set up an effective strategy for innovation, provides practical guides for conducting current-state audits, establishes frameworks to help identify project priorities, and outlines how to build and grow the right team. With 20 years of experience in the legal industry, including a decade each of practicing law and driving innovation initiatives in large legal organizations, Shaver draws upon her experience as well as broad industry knowledge to inform this practical guide. In addition to strategy suggestions, the Handbook delves deeply into methodologies for change. Shaver provides an overview of effective methods drawn from other industries that can be leveraged within legal to support and supercharge innovation efforts, equipping lawyers and legal innovation leaders with tools that will help them drive real change within their organizations.

An argument for the constitutional responsibility to participate in jury duty It's easy to forget how important the jury really is to America. The right to be a juror is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to all eligible citizens. The right to trial by jury helped spark the American Revolution, was quickly adopted at the Constitutional Convention, and is the only right that appears in both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But for most of us, a jury summons is an unwelcome inconvenience. Who has time for jury duty? We have things to do. In Why Jury Duty Matters, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reminds us that whether we like it or not, we are all constitutional actors. Jury duty provides an opportunity to reflect on that constitutional responsibility. Combining American history, constitutional law, and personal experience, the book engages citizens in the deeper meaning of jury service. Interweaving constitutional principles into the actual jury experience, this book is a handbook for those Americans who want to enrich the jury experience. It seeks to reconnect ordinary citizens to the constitutional character of a nation by focusing on the important, and largely ignored, democratic lessons of the jury. Jury duty is a shared American tradition. It connects people across class and race, creates habits of focus and purpose, and teaches values of participation, equality, and deliberation. We know that juries are important for courts, but we don't know that jury service is important for democracy. This book inspires us to re-examine the jury experience and act on the constitutional principles that guide our country before, during, and after jury service.

This book presents surveys of significant trends in contemporary philosophy. Contributing authors explore themes relating to justice including natural rights, equality, freedom, democracy, morality and cultural traditions. Key movements and thinkers are considered, ranging from ancient Greek philosophy, Roman and Christian traditions to the development of Muslim law, Enlightenment perspectives and beyond. Authors discuss important works, including those of Aristotle, Ibn Khaldun, John Locke, Immanuel Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft. Readers are also invited to examine Hegel and the foundation of right, Karl Marx as a utopian socialist and the works of Paul Ricoeur, amongst the wealth of perspectives presented in this book. Through these chapters, readers are able to explore the relationship of the state to justice and consider the rights of the individual and the role of law. Contributions presented here discuss concepts including Sharia law, freedom in the community and Libertarian Anarchism. Readers may follow accounts of justice in the Scottish Enlightenment and consider fairness, social justice and the concept of injustice. The surveys presented here show different approaches and a variety of interpretations. Each contribution has its own bibliography.

Rainmakers: Born or Bred, second edition, is about changing the business development conversation and focusing on how remote working has impacted the way business opportunities can be cultivated and developed. The book explores the personal characteristics that are common in successful rainmakers - and what holds others back from achieving their true potential. The book advocates stripping away the negative associations many lawyers have with the "S" word - selling - as this is a crucial step in redefining our approach to business development. It explores the benefits to stepping out of the safety net of simply being a great lawyer - which is vital in today's competitive market. Successful rainmakers know how to truly engage with clients, how to understand their business needs and challenges, and how to make their lives easier. This combination of skills attracts and builds sustainable, rewarding client relationships. This second edition of Rainmakers: Born or Bred - authored by Patricia K. Gillette with contributions from Rebecca Harding - helps you to identify those seemingly intangible aspects of selling that many lawyers think are unnecessary, and provides you with practical ideas to implement as you set out on your journey to improve your business development skills. Fully updated with an in-depth focus on digital and social media, this book is packed with opinions and advice from actual clients and rainmakers alike. It will help you make the most of the business development opportunities that present themselves every day - while staying true to your own personality.

In the five years since the first edition of this book published, there has been an accelerated rise in the number and influence of COO roles in the legal sphere. No longer the preserve of the largest national and international firms, mid-tier firms and even New Law and alternative legal service providers are considering a COO as a potential - perhaps even essential - component of law firm management, to achieve increased efficiency, productivity, and meet the demands of a highly competitive market. With contributions from a number of current law firm COOs, alongside some of the most respected and sought-after consultants working in this space, this second edition of Rise of the Legal COO examines the scope and variety of the legal COO role, and how the challenges and demands of the position have altered as law firms have evolved. It contains updated chapters from the first edition, and several brand new chapters covering topics such as: How the COO can enable innovation and digital transformation in their firm; The COO's role in managing profitability and client engagement; The use of data in law firm management; and The New Law COO. There are also all-new, exclusive interviews with legal COOs from a variety of national and international firms, covering topics ranging from the importance of relationships and adapting to the new hybrid, post-COVID world, to encouraging innovation in firms and strategies to recruit and retain talent. There is no doubt that a good COO is an invaluable part of a firm's management team, and the opportunities for talented individuals with broad operational management skills will continue to grow. Heavily backed up by the first-hand experience of the contributors, this title provides essential guidance to the current and future legal COO on the skills and strategies they need to succeed, and to law firms on how to recruit, integrate, and develop a COO who will be a good match for their culture and help them achieve their ambitions.

The role of general counsel and in-house lawyers is changing continually. Legal is now considered a vital component of leadership in most enterprises, and it is increasingly common for the GC to be called on for strategic input prior to important business decisions. Added to this is the convergence of social and political trends driving new demand for legal advice and service delivery; an increasing focus on productivity and efficiency; pressure to demonstrate the value of legal to the business in order to gain budget support; and the need to adapt and advance digitally. The competencies required of the general counsel and their increasingly multi-disciplinary team are also growing with responsibilities expanding to encompass reputational risk, government relations, data privacy, ESG and interacting with diverse stakeholders including regulators. Edited by E Leigh Dance and Christoph H Vaagt, both with distinguished careers advising legal departments and teams for more than two decades, the second edition of General Counsel in the 21st Century offers general counsel and all in-house legal professionals a variety of expert perspectives on the evolution of the role of the GC and the corporate legal department. Chapters are written by an international group of well-known general counsel, corporate legal leaders, and other experts, and cover important topics for general counsel today, including: The evolution of the general counsel's role; Legal operations as a competitive advantage; How adaptive legal functions are embracing technology; Managing change in a legal department; and Doing more with less. This title provides guidance on how legal departments can best support the businesses they serve, identify and address areas where change is necessary, and anticipate developments on the horizon. Readers - whether in-house counsel or private practitioners - will gather best practices and learn new and perhaps surprising lessons to help them succeed in their jobs as leaders at the intersection of law and business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly had a seismic and lasting impact on how the business of law is conducted. Whilst 2020 certainly expedited changes that were already trending - flexible work schedules, fully-remote offices, revised resource allocations, new client expectations - it also forced firms to adopt practices, methodologies, and strategies that pre-COVID they insisted they could not. These changes are not only here to stay but have become the expectation. Law firm attorneys, staff, and indeed clients are no longer interested in a traditional office, nor the practices that typically occurred within them. The modern law firm needs to evolve with both employee and consumer expectations in order to stay abreast with the post-pandemic world. The Post-Pandemic Law Firm looks at how law firms can make a paradigm shift, adopting an entirely new business model that focuses on providing outcomes, outputs, and results to their clients and internally places the wellbeing of their team as a cornerstone to the future long-term success and sustainability of the legal profession. Chapters include changes to business models, virtual and remote working, how the pandemic has affected women in the profession, the future of dispute resolution, M&A activity and changes to pricing models - all authored by highly respected practitioners in the modern legal system. For those law firms leaders and lawyers that realize a 'return to normal' is exactly the wrong approach, there is an opportunity to create a brighter future where work-life balance, market innovation, and smart use of technology will define the law firm of the future.

Partner compensation and how partners share profits is central to the cohesive fabric of any professional partnership. While one adage says that "there are as many profit-sharing systems as there are partnerships", there has recently been the emergence of a global practice about what "merit" means and how risk and reward are shared among partners in professional service firms. In The Partner Remuneration Handbook, Michael Roch and Ray D'Cruz provide guidance for senior partners, managing partners, partnership boards, remuneration committees and others involved in the partner compensation process (department heads, CFOs, HRDs), on designing effective profit-sharing systems, reaching fair reward decisions efficiently and implementing motivating contribution management processes. Filled with practical insights, this book draws on principles of partnership, motivation and incentives in human capital management, and executive compensation in closely held businesses. Looking beyond the numbers, the authors balance the big picture with a detailed how-to for any professional partnership irrespective of geography, size and maturity. This title encompasses three core elements: Exploring the different partner reward systems found in most professional firms. Showing how partnerships define and discuss partner contribution commitments that further the firm's overall strategic, operational and financial objectives. Providing decision-making guidance about marrying reward to performance and on Remuneration Committee governance. It also addresses a myriad of special topics, such as rewarding partners in management roles, and provides a proven approach for how firm leaders can take partners with them on the journey of evolving their partner compensation system.

Published in 1996, this book presents an innovative method for studying the work of professionals with clients that was applied to an evaluation study of legislation and of lawyers working with clients seeking a divorce. With the simulated client methods, the researcher plays the role of simulated or hypothetical clients with predetermined characteristics who are consulting a lawyer, the research subject. The research is carried out in the natural setting of the lawyer's office and the lawyer conducts business as usual. The method overcomes problems of access due to client confidentiality that are commonly found in research of professional groups. It is a qualitative but focused method for evaluation research which has strengths for making comparisons across professional practice. The book will be useful to those conducting research on professionals and other elite groups working with clients as well as those interested in the socio-legal study of legal professionals. This book was originally published as part of the Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research series edited by Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont and Amanda Coffey. The series publishes original sociological research that reflects the tradition of qualitative and ethnographic inquiry developed at Cardiff. The series includes monographs reporting on empirical research, edited collections focussing on particular themes, and texts discussing methodological developments and issues.

The field of Legal translation and interpreting has strongly expanded over recent years. As it has developed into an independent branch of Translation Studies, this book advocates for a substantiated discussion of methods and methodology, as well as knowledge about the variety of approaches actually applied in the field. It is argued that, complex and multifaceted as it is, legal translation calls for research that might cross boundaries across research approaches and disciplines in order to shed light on the many facets of this social practice. The volume addresses the challenge of methodological consolidation, triangulation and refinement. The work presents examples of the variety of theoretical approaches which have been developed in the discipline and of the methodological sophistication which is currently being called for. In this regard, by combining different perspectives, they expand our understanding of the roles played by legal translators and interpreters, who emerge as linguistic and intercultural mediators dealing with a rich variety of legal texts; as knowledge communicators and as builders of specialised knowledge; as social agents performing a socially-situated activity; as decision-makers and agents subject to and redefining power relations, and as political actors shaping legal cultures and negotiating cultural identities, as well as their own professional identity. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138492103_oachapter2.pdf

As F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, "the rich are different" and face unique challenges - this is perhaps especially true today. Countries are racing to disclose bank accounts to garner more tax income and the politics of being in the "1% club" are not always positive. Yet these are important clients with important needs. This comprehensive new handbook, featuring contributions by leading private client advisers, includes chapters on topics including: *the importance of having a detailed, organised balance sheet; *buying very substantial properties; *choosing a country of residence; *managing cross-border taxes; *protecting assets from marital claims; *understanding trust documents; *creating a private trust company; and *setting up a family office. In addition, this book explores risk and reputation management, addresses diminished capacity and provides an evaluation of the wealth infrastructure, the philanthropic framework and the future of global investing. Edited by Barbara Hauser, Editor of The International Family Offices Journal and the new edition of Family Offices: The STEP Handbook for Advisers, this new handbook will provide essential reading for all private client advisers, wherever they are based.

Innovation in legal services remains a hot topic, yet technology adoption does not always keep up with the hype. While there is a plethora of academic and professional research about the area, there is a lack of guidance on the practicalities of helping professionals actually get innovation right. This book focuses on implementing innovation and the innovation process in a law firm, from pilot to adoption and everything in between (whether that be within the law firm itself or undertaken by the law firm’s clients). Divided into four parts to reflect the innovation lifecycle of examine, explore, develop and reflect, this book is a practical guide for those starting or doing innovation in law firms. Students keen to know how innovation is implemented in practice will also find it useful. Innovation in Law Firms is packed with insight from the authors who lead the award-winning innovation team at Weightmans, and who have experience of starting innovation from scratch, as well as viewpoints ranging from the strategic, board-level perspective to the on-the-ground experience of actually doing innovation projects. It is practical rather than theoretical in style and aims to fill some of the adoption gap by exploring the highs and lows of innovating in law firms, and outlining practical steps that can be taken to mitigate some of the potential pitfalls. Whether at the start or part way through an innovation journey, this book allows readers to dip in and out providing guidance on specific issues as they arise as part of the innovation lifecycle.

Effective Legal Interviewing and Counselling is a guide for all scholars of law, whether new to practice or experienced, to acquire or enhance the skills required to build and to maintain client rapport in professional practice. The book explains the importance of good interviewing and counselling and includes strategies, practical examples and common mistakes. Hypothetical exchanges between attorneys and clients demonstrate these skills, encouraging the reader to see an interview as a dynamic whole, but also part of the entire process of effective practice.

This publication is directed at both attorneys and statisticians to ensure they will work together successfully on the application of statistics in the law. Attorneys will learn how best to utilize the statistician's talents, while gaining an enriched understanding of the law relevant to audits, jury selection, discrimination, environmental hazards, evidence, and torts as it relates to statistical issues. Statisticians will learn that the law is what judges say it is and to frame their arguments accordingly. This book will increase the effectiveness of both parties in presenting and attacking statistical arguments in the courtroom. Topics covered include sample and survey methods, probability, testing hypotheses, and multiple regression.