Law Books

I bought this book after using the LSAC's The Official LSAT SuperPrep and The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTest (Lsat Series). These older tests, though roughly identical in format, have very different questions from those found on newer tests. I began to notice the difference after having taken two tests with remarkably poor performance on the logic games. I then completed the most recent test I owned, The Official LSAT PrepTest 51 and earned a score more in line with what I had projected.
The simple LSAT prep advice of taking as many tests as possible holds true, but I strongly recommend using more current materials.

This is a very handy resource for almost every grammar and punctuation question imaginable. It's expensive, but for those of us who care about every detail of our writing, it's well worth the price.

A must have for the legal writer. The Red Book picks up where the Blue Book leaves off. Very useful, practical, easy to find information. Keep this beside you when you need a quick answer. Well worth the purchase.

This book is a must-have for any attorney or law student's collection. I have used it to settle many debates among colleagues :)

This is a wonderful reference work on legal style--comprehensive, authoritative, well organized, and genuinely readable. It covers an incredible range of topics: punctuation, page layout, typography, spelling, grammar, usage, and more. It makes specific stylistic recommendations for many different types of legal documents, including business correspondence, research memos, pleadings, appellate briefs, and judicial opinions, to name just a few. And it's useful for anybody who has anything to do with creating legal documents, from judges and senior lawyers, to raw associates and law students, to legal secretaries; it would even be helpful to pro se litigants (as other reviewers have noted). I really wish that Amazon provided a "look inside" that showed the table of contents - the book covers an amazing amount of ground.

It's too bad that practitioners used to obfuscatory legalese, or who needlessly produce ugly, poorly written, unreadable documents, won't ever buy, much less read, this book. There's a lot of lousy legal writing churned out every day--bad not just in the sense that a writing teacher or design and typography professional wouldn't like it, but bad in the sense of being hard to read and understand and therefore, in the end, unpersuasive. This book is an antidote.

I recommend all of Bryan Garner's books, but this is the one to start with--it's the most general, and the most broadly useful. (If you write briefs, as I do, the second one to get is The Winning Brief). Every once in a while I would quibble with one of the rules Garner espouses, but for every such rule this book must have ten others that have taught me that, much to my chagrin, I (and almost every other lawyer I know) have been doing something wrong, without realizing it, for many years. I wish I'd discovered Garner much earlier; he's really helped me improve my writing and the way my documents look. Law offices ought to make The Redbook standard issue. That's not going to happen, sad to say, but I can't think of a better, more useful book to give to new lawyers about to start their first legal jobs. Or to senior lawyers who recognize that they don't know everything there is to know about legal writing.

One downside to this book is that, because it is so comprehensive, it sometimes will seem a little too basic. If you're really a good legal writer you may want to start with one of Garner's more "advanced" books. But you'd be amazed at how many legal writers seem not to have learned what is taught in high school English classes. And in any case, this book covers much important stuff that just isn't taught in law school, much less high school, and that most legal writers don't manage to pick up along the way.

Highly recommended.

I remember getting an earlier rendition of this book when I was in grade school, and now while in law school, it still comes in handy. If you are in any class or position where you need to write letters, compositions or just about anything else, you need this book. It will tell you when to use what word, when not to use what word, and is easy to use. Can't beat it!

Kaplan/Princeton Review: I don't recommend wasting any time with either of these books. They are much too basic. If you want to study for a couple weeks and just get familiar with the test, then these are fine. However, you won't do your best if you rely simply on these general books.

I recommend the following study method:

Introduction to the test: Look at the free stuff from LSAC

Logic Games: Read the book "Ace the LSAT Logic Games", by Get Prepped.

Logical Reasoning: read the book "LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible", by Power Score.
Notice that the conditional reasoning, formal logic, and parallel reasoning sections are probably the most helpful sections. However, these questions are by far the hardest on the logical reasoning section. I recommend saving them for last to make sure you get done in time, since they are the most time consuming. (Before I read these sections I incorrectly thought conditional and logical reasoning was far to easy to be worth studying, since I had an engineering background.)

Reading Comprehension: don't read any books that tell you to highlight and underline stuff, you won't have time to finish the exam. Instead, read a bunch of novels to improve your reading skills if you were never much of a reader before. So ladies, read some romance novels, and guys well you know what to read.

Lastly, make sure to put down all study books the entire week before the test and simply do practice exams.

After looking at almost every LSAT book I'm pleased I went with the Kaplan Comprehensive. It's a great guide to how to study and does a good job reviewing each area of the test.

I am taking the LSAT in less than 2 weeks. As you can imagine, I have been studying hard for the last month. I have completed two programs so far, the one offered by Kaplan and the one offered by Princeton Review.

I did the Kaplan one first, and though I did not find the "tips" useful (such as, "use scratch work", "slow down to speed up"), I thought it was a fair preparation course and was pleased with my results on the practice tests included.

Then I got to the Princeton book and was blown away by the difference. Less fluff, more serious analysis, more detailed break down and strategies. It is really beyond compare. And, the drill questions in the Princeton book were MUCH harder. This is to your benefit.

You can compare the books yourself.

Princeton spends 98 pages on analysis of logical reasoning, Kaplan spends 17 pages.

(I am only counting advice, analysis and tips, not practice questions.)

Games, 96 pages in Princeton, 21 in Kaplan.

Reading Comprehension, 33 Princeton, 15 in Kaplan.

The difference really is that dramatic.

Kaplan has a "better score guarantee" -- well I guarantee, you will not be prepared if you use Kaplan's program.

It would almost be impossible to not increase your score at least marginally by the time your next test rolls around because you will at least be aware that scratch paper is not allowed (mentioned in Princeton, not Kaplan) and other reality checks that will come from actually taking the test.

I do not work for any of these companies, I am just a student. I feel like Kaplan's program is borderline sabotage and will only give a false sense of security. Kaplan gets 2 stars from me because I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, regarding malicious intent.

If you are preparing for the LSATs, buy the Princeton book. Buy 10 actual previously administered tests from LSAC (this is the most accurate way to assess your progress). Give yourself at least 4 weeks to study. Set a calendar and stick to it, and also take advantage of all online resources available for additional practice.

You should also buy a digital kitchen timer to help with pacing.

This a good corporate tax book, and I'm not saying that just because my professor (Raabe) helped write it. It is a very comprehensive look at partnerships, corporate, estate, and trust taxes. For anyone who plans on being a tax professional (CPA or adviser, not just someone doing taxes 101) then this is a great book and discusses all the issues. No it does not teach you how to prepare a form and it shouldn't. That is not being a professional. That is being a monkey. It teaches you how to think about the tax issues in a logical way. Learning how to fill out a tax form is done as a staff one in a big four firm. This class helps you once you are past that point and assists in actually helping your clients reduce their corporate taxes. Which is what is important and makes the money. As Raabe says, if you're not helping your client pay as little taxes as possible then you're not doing your job. There is a reason why corporations only pay 9% of the taxes the government handles despite the fact they make billions of dollars.

It is a very good book.

I received my book in a timely matter and it is in the condition as stated in the description.

i received the book much before that I expected Thank you very much

Maria

Okay so we're reading a book on TAXES people. This is not the latest and greatest thriller or murder mystery where you expect to be entertained. In fact, if you expected to be entertained by this book, then (a) you are way out of whack with reality or (2) you actually love tax related information. Basically put, this book is what it is, namely, a fairly comprehensive guide to the taxation of partnerships, estates and trusts. This is by no means a 'taxes for idiots' book where it shows the reader how to write some number on line 12 of some tax form and, if that's what you wanted or were looking for, then maybe you need the aforementioned idiots guide to taxes. Now if your in the trust business, a financial planner, a CPA or in some other industry that deals with taxes on a regular basis and your looking to gain some insight into recent developments as well as the specifics of taxes as described in the title, then this book will be helpful and I guarantee it will not spend a lot of time collecting dust on your bookshelf. Well at least not until the 2010 version. Enjoy!!

This is by far the worst tax book I have seen. I had to endure this book in a corporate tax course at CMU. This book will leave you clueless on how to actually prepare a tax form. I received an "A" in the course but the book should get an "F". Instructors should care about their students and not on the kickback that they get from the publishers. If you have to use this book - Good luck.

I have taken several classes from Eva Gregory and Jeanna Gabellini
over the last 5 years and love them both. I have read much from Jack
Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson so this book is very special to me.
Every lesson rings with me and the lessons at the end of each life
story are complete ideas to try and use. Lots of inspiration and
insight from great Laws of Attraction teachers.

This is a very good book and highly recommend to anyone. I love all Jack's books, all his books are easy reading. This book is wrote simple and easy. It will help you and take you to the next level in your life.

This book is fun, practical, easy to read and tremendously inspiring! I have studied the law of attraction for many years--and this was a great read! It inspired me to keep a Prosperity Journal and keep visioning the future I want. I will be buying many copies for my friends and family.

Thank you!

I was pleasantly surprised when I received my copy of this newest Chicken Soup for the Soul Book. Not only does it have inspiring stories throughout, there are practical exercises to use, to increase our ability to use the Law of Attraction.

This is an inspiring, educational and helpful book.

What if using the Law Of Attraction could be easy and fun?
What if you had simple ways to practice all day long?
What if you had all of these ways in one book?

Life Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction provides all of these things and more. These amazing stories are chock full of simple and easy tools that you can take, apply and make part of your life. Many of The Secret teachers show up in this book, which is a gift in itself. You will also be introduced to other LOA masters that you may not have heard of before. Do yourself a big favor and pick this book up. It just may be the best money you've ever spent, especially if you put into practice what you read.

I enjoyed reading this book. A lot. I've worked in the high-tech business and can vouch for many of the things presented throughout the pages. I did find that the book repeated many points, seemingly unnecessarily, and I do wish that more time would have been spent on ideas for how to solve the problems that exist.

An excellent book. The chapter on Russia's efforts to adopt property rights in the retail and apartment markets alone is worth the price.

Heller's main thesis is that too much ownership can work to 'gridlock' economic progress, investment and innovation. This is explored in how granting too large a bundle of rights for patents has hobbled many high-technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical development efforts, threatening U.S. prosperity and consumer well-being.

Also, a fine chapter on how U.S. radio spectrum, subject for decades to FCC over-specification of permissible uses and politically-constrained allocation practices, is presently a mostly-wasted public resource.

Every once in a while a gifted academic writes a book about a technical subject that changes the way the lay public sees the world. Michael Heller has written such a book. The Gridlock Economy illuminates by giving language to a phenomena that is all around us but we've had no word for. The stories he tells are chilling and heart wrenching. But he gives us hope as well. By describing gridlock and why it happens - the word he coins is "anticommons" - Professor Heller lead the way to creative problem solving. This book is a must read for policy makers in all fields.

Michael Heller's Gridlock Economy is this year's must-read popular economics book. As reviewers at Slate, Time, and elsewhere have noted, Heller's book compares well to 2005's mega-hit Freakonomics, as well as Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, James Surowiecki's (of The New Yorker) The Wisdom of Crowds, and Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.

Gridlock Economy shares two important characteristics with those books: a compelling central organizing idea and great writing. The central organizing idea is that "too much ownership" can stifle economic innovation. By "too much ownership," Heller is referring to the kind of situation that arises with increasing frequency across all the key sectors of the new economy including biotechnology, software, computer hardware, music, movies, and finance. Our efforts to promote innovation by granting patents and copyrights (and other government-sponsored forms of intellectual property protection) can often come back to bite us.

Heller provides dozens of interesting examples across the entire range of the new economy. His lead example involves the difficulties that a researcher at a big drug company is having pursuing a promising cure for Alzheimers. To make headway, the researcher needs to purchase or license a host of patents held by a not small number of competitors. Our current patent system gives --for better and, in this case, for worse-- gives each patent holder involved the capacity to hold up this important research. If we're lucky an entrepreneurial "patent bundler" will come along and piece together the necessary patents and licenses. Meanwhile, we're stuck in Heller's gridlock.

This is a fascinating book. Michael Heller says he got the key insight to the problem he describes in this book in the faulty way the old Soviet Union tried to create private property upon its dissolution. For example, let's say you have been operating a store and with the return of private property, you might expect that you would either get the store or be able to buy it from the state or some such process that would let you continue operating the store. However, you forget that all those Soviet bureaucrats have to get property too! So, some people formerly with the government would also be assigned rights of ownership to the property and your store. This means all of you need to share in its profits and must agree on how it is to be operated. Unfortunately, this also empowers the owners who have no real interest in working the store. They will demand to be bought out in order to let the store function. So, the store cannot function and will be closed with the building sitting vacant. Was society improved by this process?

We all know about the problem of commons. Say there was a well producing apple orchard that we turn into a park that no one owns and everyone can use as they see fit. Will the apple trees be tended to? Will the apples be disturbed to those who need it? Or will the trees be untended, the apples taken by those who want to hoard or sell them, or might the trees be cut down for their wood? All we know is that the orchard will be destroyed. Private property, rightly assigned, can protect resources by those who have an interest in their continuing. When ownership becomes too granular, what Heller calls anticommons, it freezes assets and keeps them unused just as surely as the commons problem does. If that apple orchard were owned equally by 1,000 people who each had a portion of each tree, gridlock would set in because nothing could be decided and nothing would be done to care for, harvest, or use the tree productively.

The author uses many real life business stories to illustrate his points. I found his arguments interesting and very much worth thinking about. His central examples focus on the way our current patent laws for medicines and pharmaceutical manufacturing prevent the creation of new and beneficial medicines. He also shows why our radio spectrum is mostly empty because of the crazy way we license it. The United States is far behind in the products and services available in our telephones, TVs, radios, and other uses of this precious resource. Leaving it unused is just as silly as overuse. We also get a tour of how less than optimal private solutions are created when government creates either a commons or an anticommons problem. Heller then takes us to Moscow and shows us the mess there and offers some steps we can take to fix problems in our own economy.

Good reading.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

This book was recommended to me by a lawyer friend. I have a couple of rental homes and was looking for quick, legal answers and was very surprised to see that it met all my needs. It is easy to comprehend and navigate. I highly recommend it.

This book has a lot of valuable information that you can use immediately. It has tear out forms and electronic forms which made it very easy for us to tailor the forms to our needs. I highly would recommend this book for any one looking to understand the basic rights and responsibilities of a landlord.

We purchased some rental property last year and within 2 months I was having to do an eviction.
I purchased both The California Landlord's Law book: Rights and Responsibilites and The California Landlord's Law Book: Evictions.

These were both excellent books. Easy to read and understand. Completely helped me with the eviction process (first one that I ever had to do).

I highly recommend these books to anyone who is thinking about becoming a landlord or is currently a landlord that manages their own property. They give you alot of information about what rights the tenants have and what rights you as the landowner do not have.

I purchased this book on the recommendation of a friend and I am so glad I purchased this book. It answered all of my questions and more. It is easy to read and well organized. I am a first time landlord and I feel I am in good hands with this book. The forms this book provides are also impressive, from rental agreements, to rental applications, it covers everything you can think of and does it extremely well. I cannot say enough good things about this book.

This is a great book for the residential landlord. It covers every aspect of what the typical landlord might face: from screening tenants, maintaining the place, returning the security deposit and evicting dirty rotten lease breachers.

The book is well formatted and easy to read. There is a section that covers every city that has rent control (something that I wasn't able to find anywhere else). But most importantly, it has lots of practical advice on the business of being a landlord--it is not just dry, legal stuff.

The book contains dozens of useful forms in three formats: paper (tear out sheets), .pdf and .rtf. The rtf forms are great because you can type everything, modify the form to meet your needs and end up with a clean document. But why not include .doc format documents? Word is such a popular word processing program, that .doc format should be included.

This book is focused at the small landlord facing typical situations. It is not a treatise on California landlord-tenant law.

The other commentator who had a tenant pay the first year rent in advance had a tenant that comes along once in a blue moon. To criticize this book for not covering this rare event is like criticizing Cosmopolitan magazine for not covering the Middle East. And every attorney is going to tell his/her client that form books are out of date--to do otherwise would put the atty out of business.

I didn't believe that a law book could be fun either, but this one really is. Clear, concise, and (amazingly enough) entertaining, it explains the major concepts of Contract Law in a way that never threatened to drive me to drink or to sleep.

I am a failed law student. I went the first year and quit because I didn't enjoy the experience and knew the law profession was not one I wished to join. However, I came across, and kept, a few *phenomenal* books while I was in law school, books written in layman's terms that give a wonderful understanding of an area of the law, and this book is one.

Many of us don't have the time or money to invest in a personal lawyer to answer any legal questions. This book serves the role nicely. With its simple language and highlights of the major points of contract law, it will give good direction when seeking legal council.

What this book will not do is give you everything you need to pass a law school class. I know because I tried. But for the semester I did care, this book supplemented my text and the UCC very well and helped me get an A.

The book delivers what it promises: a very succinct overview of Contracts law. I found it immensely helpful in understanding major themes in Contracts, and the book addresses many of the most popular cases found in the casebooks. My one complaint is that Prof. Chirelstien is sometimes a bit verbose at times. It often appears as if he looses sight of his audience (law students primarily) and tries to impress his colleagues in academia with his vocabulary and academic wittiness. I can get that in class from my own professors. That said, I think the book a very helpful guide to law students who are still fuzzy about the concepts after reading the casebook and going to lecture.

This book was ok. It won't help the 1L law students looking for an aid to help them supplement their readings. This book is just a glorified canned case book. Highly recommended for those CONSIDERING law school and want to read about contracts BEFORE they start school. Once your in law school, look for another source.

If your prof is really focused on the UCC, this book is going to be a waste of your time. If you have a curmudgeoney old prof who has spent his whole life in academia and is more into contract theory/policy and common law, this book will get you an A without touching the casebook.

If you just want to do well in your contracts class without having to do a lot of reading, you would be better off using Examples & Explanations instead. If you are ambitious you could use both, but I think E&E is much better if you only have time for one supplement since it covers the code and common law.

I rated 3/5 because even though the book is a great aid for contracts, my prof was a hardcore UCC guy and it was pretty much useless for me. I would still have earned my B+ without this book, but I would have done worse without E&E.

I couldn't believe how much the lsat changed in the newer version, I am so glad I had a chance to review them before taking the test. Well worth the money!

The fourth updated edition of Sharon Koomen Harmon, IIDA and AIA Katherine E. Kennon's THE CODES GUIDEBOOK FOR INTERIORS is a 'must' for any in-depth architecture or design reference library. It's the only guide devoted exclusively to codes relating to interiors alone, and explains all standards, federal regulations, maintenance of commercial and residential interiors alike, and more. This edition has been revised, updated and expanded to include many changes and more detailed coverage.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is the best textbook I have found for my introduction to building codes course. The study guide makes it an indispensable tool for teaching the basics and the complexities of modern building codes.

Could studying building codes actually be fun? Much to my surprise, when you combine this book with the companion study guide workbook it is. The author presents the information on the codes clearly and in logical order. I am studying for my NCIDQ exam and was really nervous about the "codes questions" until I got this book.

Good for interior design students- must have this book to understand how to comply with todays' design laws.

I am a registered architect, and purchased this book for the purpose of studying for the NCIDQ interior design licensing exam. I had no idea how clearly, simply, and comprehensively it would cover the IBC code (and some others). I'm sure it will be an asset for my NCIDQ preparation, but even more so, I have been able to reference it for my architecture practice.

GREAT BOOK!