Law School for Everyone: Litigation, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Torts
(By Edward K. Cheng)
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The law school. The refined skills lawyers wield every day in courtrooms across the country are the result of years of study. As much as we’d like to cultivate these very same skills, the truth is that you cannot know how a lawyer thinks and works without studying the law itself.
Even if you have no intention of joining the legal profession, learning how American law works, and how lawyers and judges operate within that law, is a critical part of any well-rounded citizen’s understanding of one of the central foundations of the American experiment.
Two things, however, keep many of us from attending law money and time. Law school is notoriously costly and typically results in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Also, students are required to give years of their lives to studying how the law works—a commitment that involves tackling mountains of required reading every night.
Law School for Everyone brings four exceptional professors from four of the nation’s most distinguished law schools right to you, providing you with much of the foundational knowledge of expert lawyers without the enormous time and financial commitments. Over the span of 48 lectures, these experienced lawyers and teachers recreate key parts of the first-year student experience, introducing you to four main areas of law most every beginning student
litigation and legal practice,
criminal law and procedure,
civil procedure, and
torts.
Enriched with famous cases from the annals of American law, powerful arguments by some of history’s most successful lawyers, and Supreme Court rulings that provide insights into how our legal system has evolved since the nation’s founding, Law School for Everyone will teach you how to approach the law from the perspective of the best attorneys and high-court judges. Most No law degree is required for you to gain access to this intimidating—but surprisingly rich and exciting—field.
Litigation and Legal Practice
Law School for Everyone is organized into four 12-lecture sections that explore, in-depth, one of the cornerstones of a first-year law school student’s experience. Each section is delivered by a law professor who specializes in teaching their respective subjects.
You’ll start with 12 lectures on litigation and legal practice. Delivered by Professor Molly Bishop Shadel of the University of Virginia School of Law, this section offers a valuable orientation to the study of law. You’ll explore how our legal system is the direct result of democratic values, how the system works, and why we teach law the way we do.
“Over time, our system has achieved some amazing protections for civil rights, free speech, equal protection, due process, the right of each citizen to vote—innovations which keep our social fabric strong,” Professor Shadel says. “And each one of these social goods is the direct result of litigation.”
These lectures offer eye-opening answers to many questions about the subtle art and craft of litigation and the behind-the-scenes lives of lawyers. Questions
What are some dilemmas a lawyer can face when representing clients?
How does a lawyer craft an exceptional opening and closing argument?
How do lawyers handle issues like jury selection and problematic evidence?
When—and why—do lawyers raise objections during a trial?
You’ll also be prompted to rethink – and perhaps change – previously held conceptions about how lawyers work, and about the issues they struggle with each and every time they step in the courtroom.
Professor Shadel’s lectures prompt you to think
the place our judicial system occupies in the balance of powers;
the importance of credibility, logic, and pathos in the construction of an argument;
whether or not someone who committed a crime should be released on appeal due to procedural errors; and
why some trials, such as the Scopes trial or the O.J. Simpson case, capture the public imagination while others don’t.
By the time you finish these lectures, you’ll realize with startling clarity why legal training is valuable well beyond the courtroom and the other places lawyers work.
“If you can think like a lawyer, you have gained valuable insight into how things get done in this country,” Professor Shadel says. “And if you can think like a courtroom lawyer, then you are able to apply that knowledge quickly and use it to articulate your positions aloud. That’s a valuable skillset for anyone to have, particularly in a representative democracy such as ours.”
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