Innovative Book Explains Essential Skills of Legal Argument
Professor Joel P. Trachtman has developed a unique, practical guide to help lawyers analyze, argue, and write effectively. The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win is a highly readable 200-page book, available for about $10 in paperback or e-book. Chapters focus on foundational principles in legal argument: procedure, interpretation of contracts and statutes, use of evidence, and more. The material covered is taught only implicitly in law school. Yet, when up-and-coming attorneys master these straightforward tools, they will think and argue like the best lawyers. Buy now at Amazon.com
Professor Joel P. Trachtman has developed a unique, practical guide to help lawyers analyze, argue, and write effectively.
The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win is a highly readable 200-page book, available for about $10 in paperback or e-book. Chapters focus on foundational principles in legal argument: procedure, interpretation of contracts and statutes, use of evidence, and more. The material covered is taught only implicitly in law school. Yet, when up-and-coming attorneys master these straightforward tools, they will think and argue like the best lawyers.
Buy now at Amazon.com
The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win provides a comprehensive framework through which lawyers can readily learn and then apply the structure of legal discourse to debates, briefs, contracts, and other legal or business dealings. Even experienced practitioners will find this book a valuable refresher and checklist of the essential tools that increase the odds of winning disputes. Learn more about the benefits of The Tools of Argument for law students, lawyers and law firms, law professors, and executives at www.toolsofargument.com.
Reviewers have noted the book to be “concise,” “insightful,” and “practical.” Readers gain a solid understanding of legal reasoning. Students who read this book as they start out in law school will have a conceptual framework that gives them a keen advantage in analyzing and synthesizing the vast amounts of new material presented across a variety of courses.
To illustrate legal concepts as used in argument, Professor Trachtman (often with attempts at humor) provides “Point-Counterpoints” throughout the book. Here are a few examples:
• The Principle of Effectiveness in Interpretation
Point: Each word must be ascribed utility and meaning, the use of different words must mean different things, and the use of the same words must mean the same thing.
Counterpoint: Agreements and laws are sometimes completed after little sleep and in a hurry, and draftsmen are not perfect. We should be cautious in setting a standard so high that it will frustrate the imperfectly expressed intent of the parties.
• Judicial Activism
Point: The judge has gone beyond the specific language of the statute, engaging in excessive and undemocratic judicial legislation. (Alternatively, the referee has gone beyond the specific rules of the game.)
Counterpoint: The judge or the referee is charged with making decisions. Where the law or the rules of the game are set in general terms, we can infer that the legislator or rule-maker implicitly delegated to the judge or referee discretion to fill in the details.
• Statistical Evidence
Point: I have statistical evidence that use of your product is strongly correlated with harm, and we have tested and ruled out all conceivable alternative causes.
Counterpoint: That is only circumstantial evidence and cannot be accepted as proof of responsibility.
Counter-counterpoint: Circumstantial evidence is indeed not necessarily conclusive, but strong correlation, combined with careful evaluation and rejection of alternative causes, is highly suggestive.
In the author’s words, “After practicing and teaching law for over 30 years, I have come to believe that acquiring the skills and mindset to think and argue like the best lawyers is not especially difficult. The problem has been that there are few places where one can learn about these techniques in a form that abstracts the essential nuggets of wisdom from their complex historical and legal contexts. Such a presentation is my goal for this book.”
Professor Joel P. Trachtman teaches International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Prior to entering academia, he practiced law at Shearman and Sterling in New York and Hong Kong. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
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For more information visit: www.toolsofargument.com