Customer Reviews

Legal Writing in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series)

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4 star:		(2)
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This book covers the fundamentals of legal writing so thoroughly and carefully that it could well substitute for many first-year legal-writing texts. Its approach may strike experienced writers as too traditional or too basic. Still, for the novice it will provide a solid grounding in legal-writing style, legal analysis, legal memos, letter writing, and persuasive writing. Many practicing lawyers would do well to heed the teachings in this book.

One critique: Persuasion is so common in law schools' first-year, legal-writing courses that this Nutshell probably had to cover it. But it covers it cursorily and might well have left it out. Persuasive writing is a topic that can (and does) fill entire books.

Like all of West's nutshell series, this little book packs a powerful punch. I purchased it for a review prior to taking a paralegal certification exam and found it to be very valuable. It gives good, solid guidelines for legal writing as well as practical examples. I highly recommend this book to any law or paralegal student needing to get a handle on the legal writing process. It will help you narrow your focus and better identify the audience for this type of writing.

This book was extremely helpful! I found it to be most useful when I read it after I read the course readings(as a review tool)...but of course, you should do whatever helps you learn best. However,I must stress, as tempted as one may get, DO NOT substitute it for the actual case readings!! There are a lot of details that are not mentioned in the horn book that law professors are interested in...and they test you on what THEY think is important, not what you think is.