Inside the American Legal Mind

Understanding the American Legal Mind: A Practical Guide clearly explains how to navigate within U.S. legal practice. Lawyers in the United States have a unique way about them. They have a unique vocabulary, unique demeanor, and perhaps most confusing to non-lawyers and foreign lawyers, a unique way of examining issues. A combination of common law legal history with the straight-shooting American style has resulted in an approach to issue analysis that is structurally different from other fields and from the civil law systems common in other countries. Precedent drives the interpretive process, providing the pillars upon which an American lawyer builds a case. Understanding how to capture relevant aspects of precedent, merge those aspects with precedent from seemingly distinct cases, and applying the resulting formula to a given fact pattern can be a harrowing experience for anyone untrained in the American legal mind. This book bridges that gap for aspiring lawyers in America as well as for foreign legal practitioners. Fandl clearly and concisely demonstrates how to research, analyze, and ultimately condense legal ideas into written form in the American legal style. In an increasingly global economy, international law and comparative law have become growth areas, and practitioners around the world need to interact with colleagues trained in a different system of legal analysis. Because so much contract law, for instance, is interpreted according to the laws of New York State, with their robust body of commercial law, even non-US entities find it crucial to understand the American legal system. Human rights cases and intellectual property crimes are often prosecuted in US courts or international tribunals. For future criminal justice practitioners as well as students planning to earn a JD or LL.M. after college, this book clearly, simply, and incisively introduces the methods of research and analysis that underlie the American justice system. Fandl builds the foundation professionals--whether US-educated or foreign-educated-will need to function in the US legal system.