Blawg Book Highlighter

Blawg Book Highlighter #32: Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law

Bill Gratsch — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:01:30 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #32: Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law

I find it curious that with all of the lawyer-authors out there, the well-known – Scott Turow, John Grisham, Lisa Scottoline, David Baldacci, and the lesser-known – Randall Hicks, David Ellis, Laura Caldwell, myself, to name just a few – why there aren't more anthologies or compilations of their works.

It seems like such a natural. As a lawyer-writer friend of mine commented recently, there's not even a "Chicken Soup for the Lawyer's Soul." (Full disclosure: two of my stories are in the just-released and just-in-time-for-Father's Day "Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul.")

I've searched and searched on Amazon and just can't find such a beast, at least not a living one. One Amazon user, Richard L. Pangburn, of Bardstown, Kentucky (the self-proclaimed "Bourbon Capital of the World), did attempt to collect all of the collections on the law and lawyers in a Listmania list titled "Lawyer talk: the most eloquent…and the funniest." On it, you'll find titles like: "Law in Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of Law-Related Works," "Lawyer's Wit and Wisdom: Quotations on the Legal Profession, in Brief," "The Judicial Humorist: A Collection of Judicial Opinions and Other Frivolities," and "The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk: and Other Tales of Legal Madness."

What most of the books on Pangburn's list share in common, other than their lawyerly tales, is that they fall into the hard-to-find or out-of-print category. You'd have to shell out $49 for a used copy of "Law in Literature" and nearly $40 for "The Judicial Humorist." Good news: You can get "The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk" for as little as a penny.

With all of the lawyer-authors out there selling lots and lots of books, you'd think that a publisher out there would think of putting them together. But most of the lawyerly collections that I've been able to find were written a decade or more ago.

Take, or example, "Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law," edited by Jay Wishengrad It was published in 1994 and featured stories by the likes of Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Thomas Wolfe and Graham Greene, some of the greatest writers of all time, as well as some lesser knowns.

You won't find pieces by Turow, Grisham, Scottoline, Baldacci, Hicks, Ellis, Caldwell or myself in there. But wouldn't it be cool if such a contemporary collection did exist?

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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.

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Blawg Book Highlighter #31: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:04:34 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #31: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges

The conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be spreading its wings these days in a surprisingly public fashion: by penning books.

It’s rare when we, the people, hear from the nine men in black. Typically, they prefer to keep silent and let their judicial writings do their talking. Thus, we’ve had to rely on a few journalistic attempts to get even a glimpse of what goes on behind their chambers. Bob Woodward and David Montgomery’s “The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court,” was the first of these inside-peak books and it has since spawned Edward Lazarus’ “Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court,” Mark Tushnet’s “A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law,” and, most recently, Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.”

One has to wonder what is happening now when not just one but two of the supposedly secretive nine have come out of the shadows and into the public spotlight as authors of best-sellers.

Just last fall, Clarence Thomas broke his silence about his contentious nomination in 1991 and other matters in his remarkably candid memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”

Now it is Thomas’s conservative brother-in-arms, Antonin Scalia, who is making the book publicity rounds with “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judge,” which he co-authored with Bryan A. Garner, editor in chief of “Black’s Law Dictionary.” No, you weren’t hallucinating, that was Scalia, the same justice who has had a contentious relationship with the electronic media, yapping it up about his new book last month on “60 Minutes.” It is amazing how they warm to the media when it serves their own purposes, like making money off of a book.

So what’s Scalia’s book about? It’s about persuasion, which, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted, is highly ironic coming from the likes of Scalia, who has, in the past, claimed that his colleagues can’t be persuaded of anything.

The book is described as sort of a how-to manual on the art of writing and advocacy. While the Blog of Legal Times finds some of the advice “beyond obvious” or “a bit stuffy,” it ultimately praises it as “a must-read for any lawyer whose job entails arguing, in writing or in person, before a judge.” Lithwick, one of the Supreme Court’s press corps, isn’t sold, however. She’s “admittedly charmed but decidedly not persuaded by Scalia’s argument.”

If you want try a sample before running out to the bookstore, the ABA Journal has excerpts of the book here: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/making_your_case

Note that I’ve violated the authors’ admonition against the use of contractions many times in this write-up.

If you need CLE credit, the Scalia-Garner will be teaching from their new book at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in July. The “quick-paced, five-hour CLE” will cover legal reasoning and argument, brief-writing, and oral argument. Each participant will receive a copy of the book and all profits from the seminar will be donated to Legal Aid. You can register online at http://www.lawprose.org/kennedy.html

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Blawg Book Highlighter #30: The Whole Truth

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:16:16 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #30: The Whole Truth

David Baldacci would be on most any short list of best-selling lawyer-writers. Right up next to Scott Turow, Lisa Scottoline, John Grisham and Phillip Margolin.

His latest, The Whole Truth, debuted at No. 1 in the New York Times Best Sellers List and currently stands at No. 2.
Although Baldacci was a lawyer before he was a best-selling author, he’s not best known for writing legal thrillers in the vein of Turow or Grisham. Rather, he’s primarily known for his political thrillers centered around Washington, D.C., near where he practiced law for nine years.

In The Whole Truth, Baldacci expands his fictional world into the realm of a global conspiracy thriller about war and truth – or the perception of truth – that has obvious parallels to current times and politics.
The book’s antagonist, Nicolas Creel, heads up the world’s largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation.
“Dick, I need a war,” Creel says to Dick Pender, the man he retains to “perception manage” his company to even more riches by manipulating international conflicts.

From there on, it is a classic Robert Ludlum-style race to save the world with only one man who goes only by the name Shaw able to do it.

Reviews of the book have been mixed. While his hometown Richmond Times-Dispatch calls it “wickedly brilliant” and declares Baldacci to be in contention for “Thinking Man’s Thriller Writer,” others have not been so enthusiastic. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave Baldacci points for highlighting the dangers of perception management and how easily campaigns of mistruth can spread in the age of the Internet, but found the plot to be “wildly improbable” and some of the writing “banal.”

Visit Baldacci’s website to read an excerpt from the book, download a copy of the promotional bookmark, or to listen to a promotional interview with the author. http://www.davidbaldacci.com/web/content/view/208/1/

Baldacci is also doing an “online book signing” for until May 23, 2008. http://www.davidbaldacci.com/web/content/view/121/1/

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Technorati Tags: david baldacci,baldacci,the whole truth,blawg book highlighter,randal richardson,randy richardson

Blawg Book Highlighter #29 - Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 03 May 2008 12:27:40 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #29: Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century

Columbia University law professor Philip Bobbitt is a rare breed of Democrat. While he, like many of his Democratic counterparts, supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is different than most in that his support hasn’t wavered. He still thinks it was the right thing to do. He just thinks it was done the wrong way.

In his new book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century, Bobbitt doesn’t take sides and he doesn’t mince words. He is in no way pro-Bush, concurring with most of his fellow Democrats that the Bush administration bungled the war on terror. But he doesn’t outright dismiss Bush, either, and, in fact, mostly agrees with the neocon principles of pre-emptive war and even the necessity for curtailing many civil liberties.

Where Bobbitt finds fault with the Bush administration is for thumbing its nose at the law and for, at least initially, trying to define the war on terror in the same way that wars in history have been defined. “We need to change our ideas about terrorism, war, and even victory itself,” he argues.

The Bush administration’s failure was that it tried to fight a war – a war that Bobbitt agrees is a real war and one that needs to be fought – by circumventing the law rather than working with Congress to change the law and by not preparing the American public for a long, drawn-out war.

As Harvard law professor Niall Ferguson writes in his review of the book for the New York Times, “The administration’s fatal mistake was its failure to understand that these things could be achieved by appropriate modifications of the law. By doing what indeed was needed, but doing it outside the law, the administration undermined the legitimacy of American policy at home as well as abroad. Bobbitt is emphatic: all branches of government must act in conformity with the Constitution and the law.”

Ferguson is an unabashed convert to Bobbit’s position, calling Terror and Consent “quite simply the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 — indeed, since the end of the cold war. I have no doubt it will be garlanded with prizes. It deserves to be.”

Other leading reviewers have also heaped praise. Publishers Weekly calls the book: "[A] complex and provocative analysis of the West's ongoing struggle against terrorism. Terror and Consent merits wide circulation and serious consideration." And Booklist says, "Bobbitt aims for the big picture and succeeds . . . Not just another book about terrorism, this is a complete theory of constitutional evolution and a sophisticated set of far-reaching policy prescriptions."

Bobbitt’s debut, The Shield of Achilles, won the Robert W. Hamilton Book Award and was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Times Literary Supplement, The Economist, and The Guardian. In addition to being a Professor of Law at Columbia University and Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, Bobbitt has served in a number of posts in the U.S. government, including as associate counsel to the President, legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra affair, the counselor on international law at the State Department, and several senior positions at the National Security Council.

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Technorati Tags: randy richardson,blawg book highlighter,phllip bobbitt

Blawg Book Highlighter #27: Baby Crimes

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:31:54 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #27: Baby Crimes

Prominent adoption attorney Randall Hicks cut his writing chops in the non-fiction realm with his well-received Adopting in America: How to Adopt Within One Year (2004), which Publishers Weekly called “a nuts-and-bolts, practical guide to the entire process of adopting a child.”

The following year Hicks made the jump into fiction with The Baby Game, the first in a mystery series to feature young California adoption attorney Toby Dillon, a character obviously drawn from his real-world experience. The book and its blend of humor with seriousness won a Gumshoe Award and was a finalist the Anthony, Barry and Macavity Awards.

An example of Hicks’ self-deprecating wit is found on his website’s reviews page, where, at the bottom of a long list of flattering reviews there is this quote, “If there is any justice in the world, The Baby Game will sell more copies than The Da Vinci Code.” It’s attributed to “Randall Hicks’ Mother.”

Hicks hasn’t rested on his laurels. In 2007, he added another non-fiction work to his credits with Adoption: The Essential Guide to Adopting Quickly and Safely.

Baby Crimes, the follow-up to his fiction debut, also came last year. This time his protagonist Dillon is hired by a rich couple to find out who’s been blackmailing them about the illegal adoption of their 16-year-old daughter. Toby’s search for her leads only to dead bodies and buried secrets.

Booklist calls Hicks a “nimble writer” and declares his second effort to be “more polished than its predecessor, with more sharply realized characters.” Publishers Weekly is less impressed and finds the book “unremarkable.”

Read excerpts from both of Hicks' fiction works and enter a contest to name the title of his next Toby Dillon mystery at his website (http://www.randall-hicks.com/home.html).

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Technorati Tags: baby crimes,randy richardson,blawg book highlighter,randall hicks

Blawg Book Highlighter #26: Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:35:03 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #26: Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk

The Patent and Copyright Clause of the US Constitution was proposed in 1787 by James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. In Federalist #43, Madison wrote, “The utility of the clause will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of the individuals.”

Now, more than 200 years later, the utility of the clause, at least as it pertains to patents, is being questioned.
In their new book, Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk (Princeton), James Bessen and Michael Meurer, make the compelling case that the vast majority of patents are worthless. The costs, in most cases, far outweigh the benefits.

The Founders miscalculated because they failed to foresee an explosion of litigation that has seen the number of patent lawsuits triple since 1980. Bessen and Meurer show that the annual cost of patents now exceeds a whopping $16 billion.

Analyzing data from 1976 to 1999, the two researchers have found that only in a select few sectors – like the pharmaceutical and chemical industries – do patents actually pay off. The result, the authors contend, is that contrary to the very purpose of patent law, in the vast majority of cases, patents act to discourage rather than encourage innovation.

A synopsis and sample chapters are at Researchoninnovation.org/dopatententswork/

For those interested in the lighter side of patents, check out What the Funny…Patents.

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Technorati Tags: patent,patent failure,james bessen,michael meurer,patents,randy richardson,blawg book highlighter

Chicago Cubs Hootenanny

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:27:32 GMT

Spring is in the air (snow in the Midwest notwithstanding). Which means Opening Day is getting closer by the minute. With that in mind, Chicago-based author, lawyer and Blawg guest blogger Randy Richardson is taking a break from his normal Saturday Book Highlighter to share this friendly heads up for any and all Chicago Cubs fans gearing up for another season of believing...

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On Wednesday, April 9, 7:30, I'll step up to the plate to read from my personal Cubs love-hate essay, "Of Fairy Tales and Felix Pie," and I invite you to join me and our rag-tag ensemble that we call The Lovable Losers Literary Revue.
Our home base is the back room of El Jardin Restaurant, 3335 N. Clark St., three blocks south of Wrigley Field.

The Lovable Losers Literary Revue, a hootenanny of Chicago writers, musicians, filmmakers, actors and bums, will celebrate and mourn the Cubs’ long losing streak monthly, all Cubs season long. Each evening will begin with a toast and end with a prayer, and in between there will be literary readings, historical reenactments, trivia contests, singing, sacrifices and general rooting.

We’ll dredge up all those old memories: Lee Elia’s tirade, Steve Goodman’s A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request, Franklin Pierce Adams’ Baseball’s Sad Lexicon, as well as a smattering of disgusted Harry Caray commentary. We’ll laugh at some. We’ll cry at others. And then we’ll laugh at all the criers.

A cross between Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast (with the Cubs as the roastee) and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, The Lovable Losers Literary Revue will explore the relationship we all have to our team.

Our opening celebration evening's lineup: Featured guest Dave Hoekstra, Sun-Times writer extraordinaire, leading a Cubs prayer; Donald G. Evans, batting leadoff, with an opening toast; Dummy belting out a punk rendition of "Hey, Hey Holy Mackerel;" Randy Richardson (yep, little ol' me) stepping up to the plate to read his essay "Of Fairy Tales and Felix Pie;" and Heather Haneman and some of her drag queen friends guest conducting "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." We'll be throwing Cubs trivia at you, too, with some prizes for the Ws.

Join us while the Cubs play the Pirates at PNC Park. (6:05 p.m. start). Sneaking peaks allowed. We will update the game throughout the reading.

For the complete schedule and much more, visit our website at Lovable Losers Literary Revue. Tune in Sunday, April 6, to WGN radio for Rick Kogan's "Sunday Papers" program (6:30 - 9 a.m.) when Lovable Losers emcee Don Evans is scheduled to talk about the our literary series.

To whet your appetite, here's a spring training excerpt of the essay I'll be reading:

It is April and the wind is blowing in from Lake Michigan, and my teeth are chattering and my toes are popsicles, and I’m sitting in section 400 in Wrigley Field's upper deck. I’m wearing a crisp off-white One Size Fits All, the maroon red C stitched into an unblemished white felt circle. The brim is pre-bent, the button on top bright red and tightly sewn.

This is not rational; it’s delusional. I’m ignoring one hundred years of overwhelming, irrefutable evidence and somehow reached the illogical conclusion that this is the year, that next year is finally here. We are a fraternity of fans unlike any other, bound not by winning, but by losing. We are the ultimate hopeless romantics, believing in fairy tales and Felix Pie. We are the die-hards.

It’s the bottom of the ninth. There are two outs, the Cubs are down 3-2 to the Cards with runners on third and second and first base open. Daryle Ward, one of baseball’s premier pinch hitters, is on deck. Cards’ ace closer Jason Isringhausen is on the mound. Felix Pie, the Cubs’ can’t miss prospect, is in the batter’s box with a full count. I, a long-suffering Cubs fan, know what’s coming. It’s inevitable. I see it before it happens, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening.

“Don’t swing, Pie,” I murmur to myself. “Please don’t swing.” Now I pray to the baseball lords. One of these days they have to hear me, right?

Isringhausen winds up and unleashes a blazing fastball high and inside. Swish. The ump gives the signal to make it official. Strike three.

“He just swung at ball four,” I mutter to the ether. “He swung at friggin’ ball four.”
An over-served, over-exuberant Cards' fan jumps in the air and 16 ounces of Bud Light rains down. On top of my Cubs hat.

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Technorati Tags: chicago cubs,cubs,lovable losers,randy richardson,lovable losers literary revue

Blawg Book Highlighter #25: In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:08:04 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #25: In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer

Technorati Tags: robert bennett,bill clinton,trial lawyer,monica lewinsky

Former President Bill Clinton blurb’s Robert S. Bennett’s new memoir, In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer, calling it a “great read” that is “written with poignancy and persuasion.”

You can glean at least a couple of things from that blurb: One, Clinton owed Bennett big-time. It was Bennett, of course, who represented Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and helped save him from being booted from office. Two, Bennett’s memoir shines a favorable light on the former president. A reviewer for The Washingtonian notes that Bennett praises Clinton “effusively” and “seemed to fall head over heels” for him.

Bennett will always be best known for his defense of Clinton, but he’s much more than that. And perhaps that’s the reason he’s written this memoir. The title refers to his past, when he was an amateur boxer in his youth. The book’s description states that he “has always brought his street fighter’s mentality to the courtroom.” His past client is a virtual who’s who of figures who have dominated legal headlines: Judith Miller in the Valerie Plame case, Casper Weinberger, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, during the Iran-Contra episode of the 1980s, Clark Clifford in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal, and Paul Wolfowitz in the World Bank Scandal.

Joe Goulden, writing for The Washington Times, praises “In the Ring” as “the best legal read I’ve encountered in decades.” Bennett’s case-by-case chronicling of his work makes for “a brilliantly entertaining work, both for the lawyer and the layman,” writes Goulden.

Publishers Weekly isn’t as kind and takes particularly critical aim at Bennett’s use of lengthy courtroom excerpts in the book. “Alas, in print, lawyerly histrionics become rambling, turgid improvisations that try the reader’s patience,” the reviewer writes.

Bennett is currently a partner with the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, the photographer Ellen Gilbert Bennett.

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Blawg Book Highlighter #24: Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:27:51 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #24: Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

I've lamented before the failure of most law schools to expose students to non-judicial writings, citing Scott Turow's "10 Books to Read on the Law" as examples of books that should be required reading in law schools.

I'd add to Turow's superb list Anthony Lewis' classic, Gideon's Trumpet, about defendants' rights to a lawyer, which I was required to read in journalism school. It wasn't required reading in law school, but should have been. I learned more from it than I did from reading the case on which it was based, Gideon v. Wainwright, which, of course, was required reading in Constitutional Law.

Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, wrote Gideon's Trumpet in 1964. His first book in over 15 years is Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, which, according to the book description, is "the story of how the right of free expression evolved along with out nation."

Fourteen words. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ." To Lewis, those 14 words in the U.S. Constitution and the debate over what they mean provide the real meaning of our democracy.

"Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding," the book description states, "the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is surprisingly recent." In the book, Lewis "tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
Critics seem to think the long wait between books has been worth it.

Jonathan Kirsch of the Los Angeles Times finds Lewis's short history of the 1st Amendment to be "always illuminating and sometimes rollicking" and notes that he "makes a stirring argument for what conservatives dismiss as 'judicial activism.'"

Writing for The Boston Globe, Rick Barlow declares that Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a "dandy primer" on the value of our freedom of expression.

And Jeffrey Rosen of the New York Times states that Lewis "has been one of the most inspiring advocates of a heroic view of the American judiciary" and that his latest contribution "is a passionate if discursive essay."

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Technorati Tags: randy richardson,blawg book highlighter,anthony lewis,gideon's trumpet,first amendment,constitution,freedom of speech,freedom of press

Blawg Book Highlighter #23: Lawyers' Poker: 52 Lessons that Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players

Bill Gratsch — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:33:32 GMT

Blawg Book Highlighter #23: Lawyers' Poker: 52 Lessons that Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

- lyrics from "The Gambler"

Don Schlitz wrote those lyrics. But it was of course country crooner Kenny Rogers that made them famous.

As Wikipedia notes, the song is often characterized as a metaphor for life in that you need to know when to stand your ground (when to hold 'em) and when to retreat (when to fold 'em).

Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet isn't bluffing when he says that lawyers can learn from card players. He's got 52 lessons, one for each card in the deck, that lawyers can glean from the poker table. These lessons he gives in his book, "Lawyers' Poker: 52 Lessons that Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players" (Oxford University Press, May 2006).

In the book, Lubet, a nationally recognized expert on trials and trial strategy, makes the case that lawyers can benefit from the same strategies that make for good poker players. Like Kenny Rogers' Gambler, lawyers need to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Interspersed throughout the book, Lubet offers real-life experiences of gamblers playing the odds at poker and lawyers in historically significant cases gambling on particular legal strategies in their cases.

"Poker players know that you can maximize your winnings by careful 'hand selection,' he writes, "meaning that you must avoid playing potential losers while backing your likely winners (often called 'premium hands') to the hilt. Lawyers could often benefit from the same approach, abandoning weak or questionable positions in order to concentrate on stronger claims."

Lubet goes on to illustrate how famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow successfully employed this strategy in his defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who were being tried for murder. The evidence against the two was too strong to defend so Darrow surprised prosecutors by convincing them to plead guilty to murder and instead concentrated on defending them against the death penalty. He succeeded and the lives of Leopold and Loeb were spared.

On the book's website, Lubet offers some interesting current events examples of how law and poker strategies can play together. Check out Ripped from the Headlines: Top Ten Law and Poker Lessons (in progress).

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