I just finished reading Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner's book Making Your Case, and I have to say I thought it was pretty good. I am a big fan of Garner, who I think has a lot of good, practical ideas about legal writing and how to make it fit today's society and over-worked lawyers. I am not a fan of Scalia in the least. As I've mentioned before, I find him to be pompous and rude. Yes, there's a bit of that in this book, but it is easy enough to overlook. I will admit to agreeing with Scalia that contractions should not be used in formal legal writing. I find contractions to be a little like jeans -- they're good for off-the-clock time, but we need to wear suits to work. Overall, though, I think the book is very easy to understand, and I think it gets across many points without belaboring them. I wish it came in a physical form that was easier to hold open so that I could copy some of the tips for my students with greater ease, but on the grand scale, that's a pretty minor critique.
As for using it with the Newmann textbook we have assigned our students, I think it will fit well as a supplement. I've already added a quote from the book to my power point presentation on persuasion (there's a p-filled alliteration for you!). I think the book will be especially helpful for those of my students who really want to do well at oral arguments later this semester. I'm thinking that I may ask if anyone wants extra resources to read, and if anyone says yes, then I'll copy the oral argument section. It is chock full of really solid advice that would help a 1L, who is preparing for something he or she has never done before. I think I will also pull out some of the ideas for my lecture on oral argument. One idea in particular that I liked was taking only a single manila folder up to the podium -- we've all seen people whose many papers go flying about as they nervously get up to the stand. In the moot courts I did, I took a single sheet of paper, but I like the idea of the heft of the manila folder and that no one else can see what you've got written there.
Overall, I recommend Scalia and Garner's book, and I think it would be a useful tool for practitioners (especially young ones), and I know it will be helpful to law students.
As for using it with the Newmann textbook we have assigned our students, I think it will fit well as a supplement. I've already added a quote from the book to my power point presentation on persuasion (there's a p-filled alliteration for you!). I think the book will be especially helpful for those of my students who really want to do well at oral arguments later this semester. I'm thinking that I may ask if anyone wants extra resources to read, and if anyone says yes, then I'll copy the oral argument section. It is chock full of really solid advice that would help a 1L, who is preparing for something he or she has never done before. I think I will also pull out some of the ideas for my lecture on oral argument. One idea in particular that I liked was taking only a single manila folder up to the podium -- we've all seen people whose many papers go flying about as they nervously get up to the stand. In the moot courts I did, I took a single sheet of paper, but I like the idea of the heft of the manila folder and that no one else can see what you've got written there.
Overall, I recommend Scalia and Garner's book, and I think it would be a useful tool for practitioners (especially young ones), and I know it will be helpful to law students.
No comments:
Post a Comment