What is the best book for an introduction to legal reasoning Forum

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jbagelboy

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Re: What is the best book for an introduction to legal reasoning

Post by jbagelboy » Wed Jul 23, 2014 3:30 am

This is dumb, just go to class and read prior year's exams samples. No commercial book will explain this for you better

Buck Strickland

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Re: What is the best book for an introduction to legal reasoning

Post by Buck Strickland » Wed Jul 23, 2014 3:41 pm

Helmholtz wrote:"The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law" by Farnsworth is excellent for an introduction (Eric Posner, Eugene Volokh, and Saul Levmore co-wrote some of the chapters).
I recently finished reading this book and thought it was excellent. I read several books that are often recommended to incoming 1Ls, and this was by far the best.

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sundance95

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Re: What is the best book for an introduction to legal reasoning

Post by sundance95 » Wed Jul 23, 2014 3:59 pm

jbagelboy wrote:This is dumb, just go to class and read prior year's exams samples. No commercial book will explain this for you better
I actually think Schauer's book adds value that reading exams won't do. I would actually suggest it to 0Ls b/c it doesn't really get into substantive law at all, but instead is all about the process of analyzing law, and so I think it could make the 1L learning curve (i.e., the 'WTF am I supposed to be doing' curve) less steep.

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sundance95

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Re: What is the best book for an introduction to legal reasoning

Post by sundance95 » Wed Jul 23, 2014 4:03 pm

skerz0 wrote:I'm thinking of studying law, thus so far, I'm only a complete neophyte and tyro. Which books would you recommend for me to self-read, from the above, or mayhap others which haven't been presented yet?
You might read some Garner on legal writing, too; hopefully that will help you break the annoying habit of using overly convoluted sentence structures and words (wrongly, I might add) in an attempt to make yourself sound smart. Straightforward and succinct writing is key.

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