Books » One-L Books

You get good grades in college, pay a small fortune to put yourself through law school, study hard to pass the bar exam, and finally land a high-paying job in a prestigious firm. You're happy, right? Not really. Oh, it beats laying asphalt, but after all your hard work, you expected more from your job. What gives?

The Happy Lawyer examines the causes of dissatisfaction among lawyers, and then charts possible paths to happier and more fulfilling careers in law. Eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach, it shows how maximizing our chances for achieving happiness depends on understanding our own personality types, values, strengths, and interests.

Covering everything from brain chemistry and the science of happiness to the workings of the modern law firm, Nancy Levit and Doug Linder provide invaluable insights for both aspiring and working lawyers. For law students, they offer surprising suggestions for selecting a law school that maximizes your long-term happiness prospects. For those about to embark on a legal career, they tell you what happiness research says about which potential jobs hold the most promise. For working lawyers, they offer a handy toolbox--a set of easily understandable steps--that can boost career happiness. Finally, for firm managers, they offer a range of approaches for remaking a firm into a more satisfying workplace.

Read this book and you will know whether you are more likely to be a happy lawyer at age 30 or age 60, why you can tell a lot about a firm from looking at its walls and windows, whether a 10 percent raise or a new office with a view does more for your happiness, and whether the happiness prospects are better in large or small firms.

No book can guarantee a happier career, but for lawyers of all ages and stripes, The Happy Lawyer may give you your best shot.

Pages: 704, Edition: 4, Spiral-bound, Aspen Publishers

A guide to effective, clear, and powerful legal writing, encouraging writers to challenge conventions. Shows how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, sharpen editing skills, and clear language of jargon. Teaches straight thinking, featuring examples and four model documents. Softcover, hardcover also available. DLC: Legal composition.

"Electronic Legal Research" is an excellent resource for anyone conducting legal research. The author proposes that all legal research is the same and presents skills that can be applied to any electronic database, including Westlaw, Lexis, the Internet and other research sources. "Electronic Legal Research" contains helpful information for the reader who may be a novice at electronic legal research and provides useful tools such as a web companion with state-specific links for legal research.

This collection of essays written by The Curmudgeon, offers practical, honest and you need to know this advice for surviving and thriving in a law firm. The book covers the basics of law practice and law firm etiquette, from doing effective research and writing to dressing for success, dealing with staff and clients and building a law practice. Concise, humorous and full of valuable (albeit curmudgeonly) insight, this is a must-read for every newly minted law school graduate or new lawyer.

Basics of Legal Document Preparation provides essential knowledge necessary for students to determine the appropriate legal document required in any given situation. It also provides the technical skills required for students to prepare each document. The book is divided into three sections with the first consisting of goals, forms, instruments, pleading and general American jurisprudence. The second section focuses on instruments such as contracts, real estate transactions, wills, and trusts. And the third section is comprised of legal pleadings for many specific areas of law such as bankruptcy, criminal and appellate practices, federal practice, and domestic relations.

Get your money's worth with ESSENTIALS OF THE LEGAL ENVIRONMENT! This affordable text offers complete one-semester coverage of business law and its environment in a non-technical, straightforward, and engaging style. Authors Miller, Cross, and Jentz explain legal issues and court decisions in a way that pares down legal jargon while still conveying what you need to know to succeed in your course and in the legal environment. ESSENTIALS OF THE LEGAL ENVIRONMENT covers all required business law topics for the CPA exam and includes a 2008 Online Legal Research Guide that provides basic information about how to find almost anything related to law on the internet.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

This book contains hundreds of tips from attorneys throughout the country with the critical advice new lawyers need to ensure their success. The book provides useful, practical advice that law schools never teach. It starts with important steps graduates can take even before they begin work. With an easily readable style, Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks continues to teach new lawyers the ropes from their first day on the job. Humorous, real-life examples illustrate the lessons along with bulleted tips that provide comprehensive advice quickly.

From a master teacher, a results-oriented approach to powerful legal writing that communicates, that persuades--and that wins.Of all the professions, the law has the most deserved reputation for opaque, jargon-clogged writing. Legal education, which focuses on judicial opinions, not instruments of persuasion, is partly to blame. Yet forceful writing is one of the most potent weapons of legal advocacy. In Writing to Win, Steve Stark, a former teacher of writing at Harvard Law, who has taught thousands of aspiring and practicing lawyers, has written the only book on the market that applies the universal principles of vigorous prose to the job of making a case--and winning it.Writing to Win focuses on the writing of lawyers, not judges, and includes dozens of examples of effective (and ineffective) real-life writing--as well as models drawn from advertising, journalism, and fiction. It deals with the problems lawyers face in writing, from organization to strengthening and editing prose; teaches ways of improving arguments; addresses litigation and technical writing in all its forms; and covers the writing attorneys must perform in their practice, from memos and letters to briefs and contracts. Each chapter opens with a succinct set of rules for easy reference.No other legal writing book on the market is as practical, as focused on results, as well written as Writing to Win.