Study Guides for 1L Classes

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) provides are computer-based, interactive tutorials that cover narrow topics of law. There are over 1,200 lessons available on 60 different topics. Current W&L Law students can click here for the Authorization Code to sign up for a free account.

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) provides are computer-based, interactive tutorials that cover narrow topics of law. There are over 1,200 lessons available on 60 different topics. Current W&L Law students can click here for the Authorization Code to sign up for a free account.

The Lexis Digital Library is an e-book collection of primary and secondary legal materials, plus a range of study aids for law school subjects from LexisNexis. Contains over 700 titles on 60+ legal topics, including the Understanding, Skills & Values, and Questions & Answers study aids series. Complimentary access is provided by the W&L Law Library to current W&L Law students.

Quimbee courses include beautifully designed video lessons that break down even the toughest concepts into bite-sized, entertaining chunks. Designed for 1Ls, the Legal Research & Writing course surveys the basic concepts of legal research and writing. Complimentary access is provided by the W&L Law Library. Contact lawref@wlu.edu for login credentials.

West Academic offers hundreds of study aids written by top legal scholars that are designed to help you succeed in law school, including Nutshells, Hornbooks, Black Letter Outlines, Sum and Substance Audio Lectures, and more. All are free to view online or download to your mobile device with a valid W&L Law account through the linked heading above.

Bad Words: A Legal Writer's Guide to What Not to Say provides a guide to words and phrases that legal writers should use less often, rarely, or not at all. The book's principal advice is that the easiest way for law students and lawyers to improve their legal writing is to use few, if any, adjectives and adverbs. To help with that effort, Bad Words lays out--one-by-one--words, phrases, and rhetorical devices that legal writers should use less often or not at all, with an explanation of why for each (delivered with some snark, sarcasm, and good humor). Offering both a guide to read cover to cover and a desk reference for looking up words while editing and drafting, the book includes an Introduction and three sections: (1) a "Top 50 to Avoid," alphabetically listing adjectives and adverbs that legal writers use most frequently and that, as described in each accompanying explanation, will likely distract, confuse, annoy, or undermine the trust of the writer's audience; (2) a longer, dictionary-style collection of words, phrases, and rhetorical devices that legal writers should use less or not at all, each with an explanation of why; and (3) a "Bonus Material" section including several lists of adjectives and adverbs that did not merit their own entries but are categorized based on a shared reason to avoid them.

Beyond the First Draft helps law students and lawyers approach the often difficult task of editing their own writing. The book starts with the fundamental idea that good writing is organized, vigorous, clear, and polished. Its ultimate goal is to help students and practitioners understand that good writing cannot be accomplished in a single draft; good writers must be good editors. Each chapter of the book is organized around one of the principles of good writing and begins with an editing checklist for accomplishing that principle of good writing. The book explains each item in the checklist, providing both students and lawyers with the instruction and straightforward editing tips that they need to become effective editors.

Onlne access available through West Academic. A Brief American Legal History is an accessible survey of the law throughout American history, written for lawyers and law students without an historical background as well as for those interested in American history without law school training.One of the features of the book is that it surveys common law developments throughout American history. The intersection of law and politics, a theme throughout the book, has never been more apparent.

Elegant Legal Writing helps attorneys elevate their writing from passable to polished. Drawing on ideas from cognitive science, stylistics, and litigation strategy, the book teaches practical techniques by example using fast-paced chapters. Readers will learn the essentials of effective legal composition: Writing clear, efficient prose; Crafting strong arguments; Telling a client's story through a compelling narrative; Overcoming procrastination and drafting more productively; Readability, aesthetics, and argumentation are intertwined. The book also discusses parts of legal writing that many guides overlook, including sentence mechanics, writing technology, and typography.

With expanded coverage in this new edition, The Elements of Legal Style features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style--what it is and how to attain it. Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices.

Essential Latin for Lawyers provides translations, discussions, and explanations of Latin legal terminology that law students and lawyers are most likely to use. Unlike other reference books, this book is arranged by subject areas in law, such as constitutional law, contracts, property, torts, general terms, etc. The book also contains a glossary of over 290 Latin terms that occur frequently in legal writing, an appendix, and a guide to classical Latin pronunciation. Since the first edition of this book was published in 1990, lawyers, lawmakers, judges, and legal scholars have continued to use Latin words and phrases in their legal writing and analysis and show no signs of discontinuing that practice.

Examples & Explanations: Legal Research is designed to meet the needs of law students who have come to expect that they will instantly receive answers to their questions. The Legal Research E & E guides students through examples and explanations of the kinds of sources they've found, using the context of interesting and entertaining real-world problems. The text helps students determine which sources are the most useful for the current project and which not; it leads students to understand how one source affects and relates to the others; and--equally important--it shows students how to write about the sources they have found.

The Fourth Edition of Examples & Explanations: Legal Writing explains what many professors consider to be effective writing, following the organization of typical first-year legal writing courses, and provides concrete examples for students to test their understanding of key legal writing concepts. Each chapter includes a checklist that can be easily transformed into a grading grid as well as chapter-by-chapter vocabulary that integrates your classroom instruction with these examples. This book--whether the entire book, selected chapters, or subsets of chapters--can accompany any legal writing textbook or materials you provide for your students.  A favorite classroom prep tool of successful students that is often recommended by professors, the Examples& Explanations series has been ranked the most popular study aid among law students because it is equally as helpful from the first day of class through the final exam.

Online access available through West Academic. This outline covers court systems, precedent, case reporting system (including regional and state reporters, citations, and case findings), statutes, constitutions, administrative agencies (including regulations), legislative history, and secondary sources (including treatises, law reviews, digests, and restatements). The outline also discusses Shepard's Citations and KeyCite, as well as headnotes and the West Key Number System.An introduction to the evolving role of artificial intelligence in legal research has been added, along with updates on computerized legal research, including Westlaw and Lexis. This edition also contains chapters on reading and understanding a case (including briefing a case), basic guidelines for legal writing, organizing your research, writing a memorandum of law, writing a brief, and writing an opinion or client letter.

The Handbook for the New Legal Writer teaches the concepts and skills covered in the first-year legal writing and research course in a way that meets the needs of today's law students. The coursebook's focus is on showing, not telling, students how to write effective legal documents using numerous examples and step-by-step instruction. The text covers objective writing, persuasive writing, legal research, and citation using a "handbook" format, allowing easy access to key information.

Nearly 140 Legal Research and Writing programs already rely on the Interactive Citation Workbook (ICW) to provide a self-paced, pedagogically sound, and mentally stimulating way for students to learn citation. Available in both Bluebook and ALWD versions, the annually revised ICW uses a building-block approach to learning citation. Individual chapters include explanatory text with examples, a checklist summary of the text, and a citation exercise for practicing and reinforcing the rules covered in the chapter.

From the authors of the widely praised Legal Writing Handbook, the Fifth Edition of this comprehensive guide hones in on the basic principles of grammar, punctuation, and legal style. Clear guidance, examples, and practical advice make this a perfect companion to legal writing texts and indispensable to the process of writing and editing legal documents. In the Fifth Edition, expanded coverage for ESL legal writers (in the text) includes examples and discussion of how and when to apply sentence patterns frequently employed in common law legal reasoning.

Online access available through West Academic. Learning legal citation is one of the difficult (and sometimes admittedly annoying) tasks that students new to the law face. This book is designed to ease that task. It initially focuses on conventions that underlie all accepted forms and systems of legal citation. Building on that understanding and an explanation of the process of using citations in legal writing, the book then discusses and illustrates the particular rules of The Bluebook and the ALWD Citation Guide for citing cases, statutes, and all other major legal sources. Its unique appendices provide a useful reference resource to aid students in formulating citations.

Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing teaches students how to organize and incorporate a legal argument into strong and cogent writing for a variety of applications in legal practice. Because effective legal writing is predicated on sound legal reasoning, the authors treat both as integral parts of one process. A timely revision that reflects current practice, the Eighth Edition presents: expanded coverage of oral research reports and email correspondence; new sample appellate briefs from a recent transgender rights case; a fresh look at statutory construction and case analysis

Legal Research Demystified offers a real-world approach to legal research. The textbook guides law students through eight steps to research common law issues and ten steps to research statutory issues. These research steps are demonstrated through many hypotheticals and visual aids. The second edition includes multiple updates. The chapters on research plans and secondary sources have been moved to their own section because these initial research steps apply to all legal issues. The chapters on secondary sources, citators, and keyword searching have been revised and expanded. New assessment questions on research tools and concepts have been added to almost every chapter.

Online access available through West Academic. Finding and using legal resources effectively is an essential skill for lawyers. This comprehensive but succinct guide covers research procedures using major online services, free Internet resources, and library materials. The most heavily used commercial databases and authoritative, free online sources are discussed and placed in context for effective and productive use in research. Discussion includes coverage of primary and secondary legal resources, as well as legislative history, administrative law, specialized and interdisciplinary resources, and research in international and comparative law. Appendices list state research guides and leading treatises by subject.

Online access available through West Academic. This text and the accompanying videos provide a basic introduction to the mysteries of legal research, giving the new legal researcher the tools necessary for success. The title Legal Research Survival Manual is chosen with care. The work does not provide comprehensive coverage of legal materials, and is not designed to replace traditional legal texts. Instead, it is an easy-to-read introduction for students at the very start of their career. It is designed to be an approachable resource to launch them into the first year of law school or as a legal research refresher for those starting their first jobs or internships. The videos can be watched in conjunction with the book or separately.

Written in a style that engages students, Legal Writing, Fourth Edition includes outstanding coverage on organizing analysis according to the CREAC formula (also known as the paradigm), the writing process, storytelling techniques, rule analysis, statutory interpretation, and professionalism. New to the Fourth Edition: shorter, more focused chapters; new sample documents; a motion memo from a ground-breaking marriage equality case.

In this synthesis of his experience on the bench and his own research into the science and art of written communications, Robert E. Bacharach, a federal court judge, shares his insights on ways language can determine different responses -- and how to use this knowledge to craft a powerful and persuasive message. Judge Bacharach follows a logical progression in crafting effective legal writing, beginning with the importance of an introduction that provides a context for the argument. At this stage, it is important to consider clarity, context, identification of the underlying legal issues, the structure of your argument, and stating the rationale for the optimum outcome.

This text examines the sources of the law, the precedent system, the court system, basic civil procedure and its terminology, the anatomy of a case, and the anatomy of a statute. The principle topics covered in the text include: legal analysis, legal organization techniques, writing the basic legal memorandum, upgrading to a more complicated office memorandum, constructing a trial level brief, appellate advocacy, and oral advocacy. The text focuses on teaching students to write in plain English that highlights, rather than obscures, the analysis.

Online access available through West Academic. This book provides a ten-step guide to clear, precise, and effective legal writing and analysis for both law students and experienced lawyers. It gives the keys to writing legal memoranda and briefs, organizing analysis, crafting clear and concise sentences, using legal language accurately, using grammar and punctuation properly, writing persuasively using classical rhetorical techniques. The book describes a method for analyzing and improving individual writing style includes a sample analysis. It also includes new material on using plain English and new legal documents to illustrate effective writing techniques.

Readers of this textbook will learn to think deductively and analogically, to distill the holdings of multiple cases into a coherent legal rule, and to craft a compelling narrative, among other skills. All the nuts and bolts of effective lawyering are here. But this new edition also helps students understand how context (historical, societal, and personal) can play a role in legal analysis and gives students tools for how to find and use that context. Professors Susan McMahon and Sonya Bonneau have mined the writings of legal academics, lawyers, judges, psychologists, and philosophers to produce a text for legal writing courses that teaches students practical writing skills, uses theory to explain why those skills are effective, and primes students to understand the influence of context on legal thinking.

Since 2001 Bryan A. Garner's Legal Writing in Plain English has helped lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. Now the leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book's principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section.

Online access available through West Academic. Legal Writing Style promotes the art of good writing by teaching students and practitioners the tools to make their prose clear, precise, simple, and forceful. With examples of what works and what doesn't, this short but comprehensive treatise provides an invaluable resource for recasting writing for maximum impact and ultimate success.

Mastering Legal Analysis and Drafting seeks to emphasize the fundamental structure and methods of legal drafting, grounded in the surprisingly few elemental rules and techniques of legal analysis. It is designed to (1) help the legal drafters identify those elemental rules and techniques, and (2) show how they are used to prepare effective legal writing in different formats, most of which share common elements and structures. The book begins with a discussion of legal analysis, followed by a discussion of general drafting principles and rules, and then proceeds to apply these concepts to specific forms of legal writing, including client letters, demand letters, research memoranda, motions and supporting documents, appellate briefs, contracts and instruments, and legislation. It closes with a chapter on "writing to build a record" that reprises the other chapters and highlights the key concepts.

Plain English for Lawyers has been a favorite of law students, legal writing teachers, lawyers, and judges for almost 40 years. The seventh edition, co-authored by Amy Sloan, updates this classic text while preserving all the approaches that make it such a standard in the field. In addition to guiding students through techniques for producing clear writing, this edition includes new exercises, a discussion of the principles of document design, a chapter on the appropriate uses of generative AI for writing, and detailed coverage of best practices for correct pronoun usage and avoiding gendered language. Plain English for Lawyers remains (in size only!) a little book, small enough and palatable enough not to intimidate overloaded law students.

A Practical Guide to Legal Writing and Legal Method continues to provide complete coverage of basic legal writing and analysis with the clarity and precision that has made it a classic in the field. The text is concise and flexible, teaching students to apply legal method concepts to a written or oral argument through a combination of introductory exposition, extensive examples, and practice exercises. Offering great teaching opportunities in the classroom, the lessons and examples also support independent study and review. A valuable text that students will want to keep as practitioners.

The Pre-Writing Handbook for Law Students describes a detailed, systematic approach to the task of analyzing a legal problem. The Handbook is designed to help students focus on and become competent in the process of legal analysis that precedes their work on early legal writing products such as memos, case briefs, and other documents. The Handbook is designed with first-semester legal writing students in mind, but it is also suitable for use in academic support courses and in pre-law programs. The Handbook teaches the process of legal analysis by walking students through a series of repeatable steps they can apply to any legal scenario.

Online access available through West Academic. Principles of Legal Research provides comprehensive yet concise coverage of research methods in both online and printed resources. It has been thoroughly updated to explain the latest features of the major legal research platforms as well as dozens of other free and subscription websites. In this expanded and reorganized edition, an introductory survey of research strategies is followed by discussion of major secondary sources, treatment of the sources of U.S. law created by each branch of government, chapters on specialized resources for litigation and transactional practice, and an overview of international and foreign law.

Researching the Law: Finding What You Need When You Need It, Third Edition, guides students through a decidedly contemporary approach to legal research. Widely respected author Amy E. Sloan presents legal research as a process of efficiently filtering a vast quantity of available information. Simply put, students learn how to locate and identify the most pertinent and authoritative information available with the greatest possible expedience. Sloan's clear, concise explanations of essential research sources are presented in a context that speaks to the way lawyers do research today, with a flexible approach that works in a rapidly changing research environment.

Since its first edition in 2002, The Redbook has established itself as the most authoritative, comprehensive, and easily usable manual of legal style. Written by Bryan A. Garner, with contributions from all six lawyers at LawProse Inc., The Redbook covers everything that mere citation manuals don't and can't: punctuation, capitalization, grammar, prose style, and clarity in general. The Redbook is an eminently usable reference book. Written in the style of a restatement, the black-letter rules are followed by exhaustive comments and illustrations.

Online access available through West Academic. Legal research can be costly for students and practitioners in two ways: time and money. A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research, 2nd identifies available free and fee-based legal research options as good, cheap and/or fast. This book compares free and fee-based legal research resources for each stage of civil litigation, including the initial case assessment; discovery and investigation resources to find information on judges, attorneys, experts, and companies; and resources to find pleadings, motions, and briefs for pretrial action.

Onlne access available through West Academic. Everything you wanted to know about Artificial Intelligence (AI) but were afraid to ask.This guide helps attorneys, judges, judicial administrators, paralegals, and law students understand what happens when the world's slowest profession meets the world's fastest evolving technology. From commercial law to criminal law, from intellectual property law to employment law, and from consumer law to corporate law, no area of practice will be left untouched by AI.No technical mumbo-jumbo here. This book is an easy-to-understand survival manual for the coming world of AI. You will learn about the core concepts of AI, its implications in different fields of law, and its ethics and regulation. We have combed through hundreds of articles, reports, and corporate manuals and distilled their essence for you. We are like ChatGPT, just funnier and with fewer hallucinations.We hope this book inspires lawyers, young and old, to become AI Jedis in the pursuit of justice for all.

Online access available through West Academic. Like the inaugural edition, this second edition of A Short & Happy Guide to Legal Writing provides a full concept of the history and practice of legal writing in the briefest of formats. The author recounts the theory of written laws from our British roots to the present American legal court system. The guide then transitions into teaching the framework and construction for written legal communication, explaining the underlying theory of citation, how to read precedent opinions. Complete with samples of case briefing, a useful paradigm for organizing predictive and persuasive analyses, complete interoffice and e-memos, updated, annotated examples of real appellate briefs, and more, this book packs a big punch in a small footprint.

Online access available through West Academic. In this 3.25 hour audio lecture, Professor Robert C. Berring will lead you step-by-step through every topic in legal research. The information and ideas you struggled with previously are now brought to life simply and succinctly. These audio lectures are time saving, convenient and effective.

The Bluebook® provides the rules for legal citation, but can be intimidating and frustrating to use. With its simple building-block approach, this survival manual teaches how to understand and master the essential rules for legal practitioners. Rules are fully described and illustrated using clear explanations and illustrations of the basic components of legal citations; step-by-step instructions for building citations to the most common authorities cited by legal practitioners; detailed guidance for citing legal materials to both print and electronic sources; examples, comparison charts, illustrations, and bullet-point explanations designed for quick mastery of basic Bluebook citation rules.

A standard-setter in American legal education, Writing and Analysis in the Law provides a guide to legal writing, focusing on the importance of clear organization in written communications. Developed as a textbook for a first-year law school course, and is successful in courses for foreign LLM students, the book introduces law students to analyzing and writing about legal authority in cases and statutes. It discusses the structure and persuasive techniques of effective argumentation. The book makes effective use of high-quality and illustrative examples and writing exercises. It also includes access to helpful PowerPoint slides for use in the classroom and class preparation. Lucid, compact, and up-to-date, this work consistently draws acclaim in law schools across the country. The sixth edition has been streamlined and designed to be reader friendly: it uses white space, bullet points, tabulation, and headings that chunk information to enable student to grasp information efficiently.