Judicial Externships: Reference Materials

This book focuses on the role of the judicial clerk in the modern court system.

The third edition of Learning From Practice covers topics relevant to law students working in real practice settings, including externships, in-house clinics, and other experiential courses. Intended for use in course seminars and tutorials, each chapter helps students succeed in their work, reflect on their development, and plan for their lives as lawyers. The book starts with topics common to all real world experience: planning to meet goals, working under supervision, observing carefully, communicating effectively, understanding bias and cultural difference, and reflection. The book offers detailed coverage of ethical issues in experiential coursework including a new chapter on professionalism. A group of chapters address key lawyering abilities such as good judgment, client relationships, collaboration, writing for practice, and making presentations. This edition expands coverage of important practice areas including judicial, criminal justice, public interest, public service, and transactional practices. The closing chapters turn to the future and focus on developing professional identity, maintaining well-being, finding a job and career, and the future of the profession. Throughout, the book encourages students toward self-direction, reflection, dialogue and collaboration, critical assessment of law practice, and well-being and career satisfaction.

The All-Inclusive Guide to Judicial Clerking is a comprehensive resource ideal for current and prospective law clerks and judicial externs as well as law professors who teach judicial drafting courses or direct judicial externship programs. The book explores the purpose and function of a law clerk, the nature and structure of the judiciary, how to apply for and obtain a clerkship, and most importantly, how to perform it well. Among other things, the book explains how to draft judicial opinions, bench memos, orders, and chambers correspondence as well as how to prepare for oral argument, hearings, and trials. It also discusses judicial ethics, professionalism, confidentiality, courtroom decorum, docket management, and other issues that law clerks commonly encounter. The book breaks down complex tasks, such as opinion drafting, into a series of simple, concrete steps and provides checklists, graphical illustrations, annotated judicial opinions, and sample emails, letters, and samples of other documents that law clerks often prepare. The book also shares practical guidance gleaned from law clerks who have served judges across America. Book Review: The All-Inclusive Guide to Judicial Clerking by Abigail L. Perdue: A Must-Have Resource for Prospective Judicial Clerks and Advisors by Elyse Diamond.

With expanded coverage in this new edition, The Elements of Legal Style features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style--what it is and how to attain it. Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly (often wittily) explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides abundant examples from the best legal writers of yesterday and today, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia. If you want to make your writing clearer, more precise, more persuasive, and above all more stylish, The Elements of Legal Style offers the surest--and the most enjoyable--means to that end.

Since first appearing in 2002, Bryan Garner's The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style has established itself as the go-to source for all questions of legal style (apart from citation form). The book isn't just one talented man's effort: Garner has two experienced coauthors plus a hands-on team of 54 editorial advisers, most of whom have long and valuable experience teaching LRW. The book is a one-of-a-kind resource--the legal writer's equivalent of The AP Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style. The brand-new fourth edition has lots of new material, including an especially helpful new chapter on handling quotations. The two exhaustive indexes (word and subject), plus the detailed table of contents, make it easy to find authoritative guidance within seconds, whatever the question might be. The author, Bryan Garner, is now the most frequently cited author in opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. It's true: last term, four of his books were cited a total of 14 times (in the somewhat fewer than 90 cases decided). This term the count is on a similar pace. In American appellate decisions generally, Garner is at the top end of sources relied on. You can rely on him, too, in the most comprehensive, nitty-gritty resource available for legal writers: The Redbook. Don't leave home without it.