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Books > Law > Jurisprudence & general issues > Legal skills & practice
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recent years have witnessed growing concern internationally in wellbeing and mental health across the legal community, a shift reflected in a host of initiatives, networks, reports and research studies. Changes to working patterns, generational shifts, and an increased interest in overall wellbeing have contributed to a growing movement towards better working practices - across all industries but particularly in high pressure professions such as law. The genesis of the lawyer wellbeing movement in the United States has spread to the UK, EU, Canada and Australia. In this opening chapter, Bree Buchanan, chair of the ABA Commission, covers the 2016 research regarding lawyer and law student impairment that served as the catalyst for creating the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing. From this coalition of national organizations came the 2017 Report, which in turn launched a wide variety of national and state policy and practice innovations. Bree summarizes a snapshot of those developments.
A new installment of the series of Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons, this book expands upon the criminal justice coverage of earlier volumes, offering the voices of 14 lawyers from 13 diverse locales, including countries in Africa, North America, South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. This book is intended for students and others focusing on law and legal studies, policing, psychology and law, criminology, justice studies, public policy, and for all those interested in the front lines of legal change around the world. Featuring versatile chapters perfect for individual use or as part of a collection, this volume offers a personal approach to the legal world for students and experienced professionals.
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.
With barely a week going by without news that yet another chief innovation officer has taken up residence in a global law firm, it's clear innovation is still a hot topic, continuing to grow and expand in terms of its reach within law firms. However, despite rapid advancement in recent years, it's generally acknowledged that legal is behind the curve in terms of innovation compared to the rest of the corporate world. It's also generally assumed that innovation relates purely to technology - meaning none but the largest companies with the deepest pockets can benefit from it. This insightful book features contributions from legal firms doing innovative things in all aspects of the field, going beyond the enabling technology - from partnering with clients to productizing services, developing external alliances, transforming the talent management function, to encouraging lawyers to invest billable time in new innovative approaches to the business and practice of law - as well as approaches to dealing with market disruption itself.
Whilst educational theory has developed significantly in recent years, much of the law curriculum remains content-driven and delivered traditionally, predominantly through lecture format. Students are, in the main, treated as empty vessels to be filled by the eminent academics of the day. Re-thinking Legal Education under the Common and Civil Law draws on the experience of teachers, practitioners and students across the world who are committed to developing a more effective learning process. Little attention has, historically, been paid to the importance of the application of theory, the role of reflective learning, the understanding and acquisition of lawyering skills and the development of professional responsibility and wider ethical values. With contributions from across the global north and south, this book examines the history of educating our lawyers, the influences and constraints that may shape the curriculum, the means of delivering it and the models that could be used to tackle current shortcomings. The whole is intended to represent what might be desirable and possible if we are to produce lawyers that are fit for purpose in the 21st century, be that in either in civil or common law jurisdictions. This book will be of direct assistance to those who wish to understand the theory and practice of legal pedagogy in an experiential context. It will be essential reading for academics, researchers and teachers in the fields of law and education, particularly those concerned with curriculum design and developing interactive teaching methods. It is likely to be of interest to law students too - particularly those who value a more direct engagement in their learning.
Judicial Education has greatly expanded in common law countries in the past 25 years. More recently it has become a core component in judicial reform programs in developing countries with gender attentiveness as an element required by donor agencies. In civil law jurisdictions judges schools have long played a role in the formation of the career judiciary with a focus on entry to the judicial profession, in some countries judges get an intensive in-service education at judicial academies. Gender questions, however, tend to be neglected in the curricula. These judicial education activities have generated a significant body of material and experience which it is timely to review and disseminate. Questions such as the following require answers. What is the current state of affairs? How is judicial education implemented in developed and developing countries all around the world? Who are the educators? Who is being educated? How is judicial education on gender regarded by judges? How effective are these programs? The chapters in this book deal with these questions. They provide a multiplicity of perspectives. Six countries are represented, of these four are civil law countries (Germany, Argentina, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and two are common law countries (Canada; Uganda). This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the Legal Profession.
The Lawyer's Guide to the Future of Practice Management provides law firm leaders with expert opinion on the very latest guidance and market knowledge on what today's legal marketplace might look like tomorrow, organized into four crucial areas of practice management - technology, people and culture, finance and strategy - before taking a horizon-scan of the future, and what law firms need to be aware of in the coming months and years.
Whilst educational theory has developed significantly in recent years, much of the law curriculum remains content-driven and delivered traditionally, predominantly through lecture format. Students are, in the main, treated as empty vessels to be filled by the eminent academics of the day. Re-thinking Legal Education under the Common and Civil Law draws on the experience of teachers, practitioners and students across the world who are committed to developing a more effective learning process. Little attention has, historically, been paid to the importance of the application of theory, the role of reflective learning, the understanding and acquisition of lawyering skills and the development of professional responsibility and wider ethical values. With contributions from across the global north and south, this book examines the history of educating our lawyers, the influences and constraints that may shape the curriculum, the means of delivering it and the models that could be used to tackle current shortcomings. The whole is intended to represent what might be desirable and possible if we are to produce lawyers that are fit for purpose in the 21st century, be that in either in civil or common law jurisdictions. This book will be of direct assistance to those who wish to understand the theory and practice of legal pedagogy in an experiential context. It will be essential reading for academics, researchers and teachers in the fields of law and education, particularly those concerned with curriculum design and developing interactive teaching methods. It is likely to be of interest to law students too - particularly those who value a more direct engagement in their learning.
"Risks, Reputations, and Rewards" looks at a variety of
interrelated questions about contingency fee legal practice: What
is the nature of the contingency fees that lawyers charge? How do
lawyers get and screen potential cases? How do contingency fee
lawyers interact with their clients and opponents? What is involved
in settling these cases? What types of returns do contingency fee
cases produce? And what role does reputation play in contingency
fee practice? The author argues that to be successful, contingency
fee lawyers must generate a portfolio of cases, similar to an
investment portfolio with its associated risk. This has a
significant impact on how contingency fee lawyers obtain and select
cases, manage their work, and deal with the pressures that arise in
settling cases. More important, understanding the work of
contingency fee lawyers in terms of an ongoing practice rather than
in terms of individual cases mitigates some of the significant
conflicts that may exist between lawyers and clients.
Although international arbitration has emerged as a credible means of resolution of transnational disputes involving parties from diverse cultures, the effects of culture on the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy of international arbitration is a surprisingly neglected topic within the existing literature. The Culture of International Arbitration fills that gap by providing an in-depth study of the role of culture in modern day arbitral proceedings. It contains a detailed analysis of how cultural miscommunication affects the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy in both commercial and investment arbitration when the arbitrators and the parties, their counsel and witnesses come from diverse legal traditions and cultures. The book provides a comprehensive definition of culture, and methodically documents and examines the epistemology of determining facts in various legal traditions and how the mixing of traditions influences the outcome. By so doing, the book demonstrates the acute need for increasing cultural diversity among arbitrators and counsel while securing appropriate levels of cultural competence. To provide an accurate picture, Kidane conducted interviews with leading international jurists from diverse legal traditions with first-hand experience of the complicating effects of culture in legal proceedings. Given the insights and information on the rules and expectations of the various legal traditions and their convergence in modern day international arbitration practice, this book challenges assumptions and can offer a unique and useful perspective to all practitioners, academics, policy makers, students of international arbitration.
Designing a contract is often more of an economic than a legal problem. A good contract protects parties against opportunistic behavior while providing motivation to cooperate. This is where economics and, especially contract theory, may prove helpful by enhancing our understanding of incentive issues. The purpose of this book is to provide specific tools which will help to write better contracts in real world environments. Concentrating on moral hazard literature, this book derives a tentative checklist for drafting contracts. As an economic contribution to a field traditionally considered an art rather than a science, this treatment also gives much attention to methodological issues.
"A readable and enjoyable book of interest to the lay public,
litigators and aficionados of trials alike...well worth
reading." "Delightful and insightful...He knows how to tell a story, and
he knows that facts depend on perceptions." "Lubet's ability to downplay advocacy techniques while
emphasizing the rich context of facts, story, and personalities is
superb" "A delightful and insightful book [that] entertains as it
instructs." "This excellent set of essays, both scholarly and imaginative,
offers a rare bridge between the parallel universes of legal
scholarship and courtroom practice. There is no better guide to the
enterprise of storytelling in the law than Steve Lubet." Lubet's Nothing But The Truth presents a novel and engaging analysis of the role of storytelling in trial advocacy. The best lawyers are storytellers, he explains, who take the raw and disjointed observations of witnesses and transform them into coherent and persuasive narratives. Critics of the adversary system, of course, have little patience for storytelling, regarding trial lawyers as flimflam artists who use sly means and cunning rhetoric to befuddle witnesses and bamboozle juries. Why not simply allow the witnesses to speak their minds, without the distorting influence of lawyers' stratagems and feints? But Lubet demonstrates that the craft of lawyer storytelling is a legitimate technique for determining the truth andnot at all coincidentallyfor providing the best defense for the attorney's client. Storytelling accomplishes three important purposes attrial. It helps to establish a "theory of the case," which is a plausible and reasonable explanation of the underlying events, presented in the light most favorable to the attorney's client. Storytelling also develops the "trial theme," which is the lawyer's way of adding moral force to the desired outcome. Most importantly, storytelling provides a coherent "story frame," which organizes all of the events, transactions, and other surrounding facts into an easily understandable narrative context. As with all powerful tools, storytelling may be misused to ill purposes. Therefore, as Lubet explains, lawyers do not have carte blanche to tell whatever stories they choose. It is a creative process to be sure, but every story must ultimately be based on "nothing but the truth." There is no room for lying. On the other hand, it is obvious that trial lawyers never tell "the whole truth," since life and experience are boundless and therefore not fully describable. No lawyer or court of law can ever get at the whole truth, but the attorney who effectively employs the techniques of storytelling will do the best job of sorting out competing claims and facts, thereby helping the court arrive at a decision that serves the goals of accuracy and justice. To illustrate the various challenges, benefits, and complexities of storytelling, Lubet elaborates the stories of six different trials. Some of the cases are real, including John Brown and Wyatt Earp, while some are fictional, including Atticus Finch and Liberty Valance. In each chapter, the emphasis is on the narrative itself, emphasizing the trial's rich context of facts and personalities. The overall conclusion, as Lubet puts it, is that"purposive storytelling provides a necessary dimension to our adversary system of justice."
In the Commonwealth,the principle of legal professional privilege has been treated as almost sacrosanct and in consequence, derogations from it have been rare. The traditional view is that, despite resulting unfairness, the rule must be absolute in order to achieve its stated goals. This view is challenged here through an examination of the structure of and exceptions to the privilege. Auburn argues that the claims made of the rule in the past have been overstated and that the privilege is more robust than widely assumed. Being dependent on patterns of client behaviour, it can accommodate change, while still fulfilling its essential function. Having examined the theory, structure and main derogations from the privilege, the author asserts that we should be more sceptical of the claims made of the privilege, and in appropriate circumstances should give more weight to the values underlying the disclosure of evidence. This thoughtful analysis presents a new approach to the issue of legal professional privilege. It offers a thorough exploration of the principles underlying the privilege and takes a Commonwealth-wide approach, covering the law in England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as drawing on relevant principles from European and United States law. Contents 1. Conceptual and Historical Introduction Part A: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 2. Emerging Common Law Right 3. Privilege Under the European Convention on Human Rights 4. Confidentiality 5. Disclosure 6. Structure of the Privilege - General Theory 7. Structure of the Privilege - Application PART B: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 8. Crime-fraud Exception 9. Criminal Exculpatory Evidence 10. Loss of Privilege Based on Intent and Disclosure [Waiver] 11. Fairness Based Loss of Privilege [Waiver] 12. Indadvertent Disclosure 13. Past and Future Directions
Obtaining an accurate and comprehensive overview of performance throughout the firm is no easy undertaking - there are numerous aspects of the firm to inspect and many varying streams of information to consider. From individual partner performance to firm-wide cash flow, correctly measuring and managing performance involves a keen eye on both the micro and macro aspects of the firm. Measuring and Managing Performance for Law Firms offers an overview of the measurement and metrics that firms can employ to effectively manage their work force and firm-wide performance. Discussing a range of topics from metrics that stimulate innovative thinking, effectively managing high-performance teams and dealing with stress in the work place, and implementing "balanced scorecards" and "opportunity scoring assessments" to track firm performance and effectively utilize internal information resources.
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.
The current surge of displaced and trafficked children, child soldiers, and child refugees rekindles the virtually dead letter of the Genocide Convention prohibition on transferring children of one group to another. This book focuses on the gap between genocide as a legal term and genocidal forcible child transfer as a catastrophic experience that disrupts a group's continuity. It probes the Genocide Convention's boundaries and draws attention to the diverse, yet highly similar, patterns of forcible child transfers cases such as colonial genocide in the US, Canada, and Australia, Jewish-Yemeni immigrants in Israel, children of Republican parents during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, and Operation Peter Pan in Cuba. The analysis highlights the consequences of the under-inclusive protection granted only to four groups. Ruth Amir argues effectively for the need to add an Amending Protocol to the Genocide Convention to protect from forcible transfer to children of any identifiable group of persons perpetrated with the intent to destroy the group as such. This proposed provision together with Communications and Rapid Inquiry Procedures will highlight the gravity of forcible child transfers and contribute to the prevention and punishment of genocide.
Classical, rhetorical techniques can enhance the persuasiveness of Supreme Court opinions by making their language clear, lively, and memorable. This book focuses on three techniques, "invention" (creation of arguments), "arrangement" (organization), and "style" (word choice) in the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Robert Jackson, Hugo Black, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, respectively. The justices featured here contributed to the Court's rhetorical legacy in different ways, but all five rejected the magisterial opinion style of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in favor of a more personal and conversational format. Because of this, their opinions have endured, at least in part, and while modern speakers may not recall the authors, they understand and embrace the ideas expressed in their legal writings and continue to apply it to current debates. This book can be used by practicing lawyers as well as academics not only to study legal writing techniques but also as a tool to improve their own.
Since the publication of its first edition in 2005, Advocacy Practice for Social Justice has served as a clear, comprehensive, and practical resource for social work courses in advocacy, community practice, and macro practice. Now in its fourth edition, this text provides extensive information on the value base for advocacy; an examination of why people get involved in advocacy; and step-by-step instructions for social workers and others who want to impact laws, regulations, and policies at any level. Bearing in mind the National Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics' requirements to advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations, readers learn that advocacy is a problem-solving technique similar to that used in social work practice of all types. The book moves through the stages of advocacy: getting involved; understanding the issue; planning; advocating through education, persuasion, and negotiation; presenting information effectively; monitoring and evaluating results; and integrating advocacy into a social worker's everyday practice. The fourth edition's inclusion of new topics and solid foundation in social work values make it a must-read as social work students and practitioners work diligently to maintain the profession's focus on successful advocacy for social justice.
The contemporary legal landscape is no longer a rigid hierarchy composed of limited and complacent behemoths, but rather an ecosystem, filled with a wide variety of players that facilitate disruption and revolution and jostle for clients' attention with agility and innovation. This includes - but is certainly not limited to - entities such as technology companies, consultants, alternative legal service providers, and paraprofessionals. Law firms are not the only ones in this environment that must adapt or fail; the legal department and in-house counsel, too, must transform in order to remain relevant and competitive. The world of the general counsel (GC) has already seen massive shifts - ever-increasing globalization has meant more legal issues and corporate activism, which in turn has generated new challenges and heightened demand. The GC cannot simply act in the role of outsourcer of work to external counsel, as in the past. With the growth of legal departments (it is now not uncommon for legal departments to number in the hundreds or even thousands, often formed of expensive lateral hires) the GC must now wear a number of hats, including that of the "CEO" of their department. The introduction of data analysis into the legal space and the oft-repeated mantra of "less with more" has meant that the GC must now think in terms of spend and budget more than ever before, transforming the legal department from a cost-center to a value-add. They must cultivate a breadth and scope of vision, able to organize and lead their department as an innovator. The flourishing legal ops role also provides yet another challenge for the GC. As the incorporation of legal ops within the law department becomes increasingly essential, the GC must work to ensure alignment and manage change. The present time has been hailed as the golden age of in-house lawyering, yet - and perhaps because of this - it is an uncertain and challenging time for the GC. Tipping Point: Transformation and Innovation in the Legal Department is intended as a handbook for the GC looking to build a truly modern legal department and revolutionize their role. Encompassing aspects from leveraging influence with the c-suite to reimagining organizational hierarchies and seeking the right operational professional, this publication features contributions from those at the frontiers of the profession as it transforms and embraces new areas of expertise.
Beyond the Courtroom provides a compilation of articles and chapters by a dispute resolution scholar who has made remarkable contributions over his thirty-year career. Professor Abramson has focused his research and practice on parties trying to resolve their own disputes. This book includes publications that have contributed to launching the then new field of mediation representation with special attention on how attorneys, as gate keepers to mediation, can effectively represent clients. The book also includes his original publications that have contributed to the emerging field of intercultural and international mediation and the already robust and mature field of negotiations.
Among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, lawyers were heavily represented. To a large extent, they also shaped the evolution of French political culture of the ancien regime. Lawyers and Citizens traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. David Bell analyzes how these key "middling" figures in French society were transformed from the institutional technicians of absolute monarchy into the self-appointed "voices of public opinion", and leaders of opposition political phamphleteering. He describes the birth of an independent legal profession in the late seventeenth century, its alienation from the monarchy under the pressure of religious disputes in the early eighteenth century, and its transformation into a standard-bearer of "enlightened" opinion in the decades before the Revolution. Lawyers and Citizens also illuminates the workings of politics under a theoretically absolute monarchy, and the importance of long-standing constitutional debates for the ideological origins of the Revolution. It also sheds new light on the development of the modern professions, and of the French legal system. Based on extensive primary research, this study will be of interest to historians and legal scholars alike. |
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