The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law First edition, first printing (full number line)

How do laws and the legal process balance the competing interests of everyone involved? What do judges consider when deciding how a law should be construed? Ward Farnsworth here presents tools to help answer these questions, and others like them: thirty-one concepts that underlie our legal system. Paraphrasing part of the book's preface, the goal is to gather and clearly explain, with numerous examples, the most interesting ideas presented in law school.That said, I think this book is under-sold as specifically being for legal-minded people. Some of the concepts are more specific to the law, to be sure. But most of the ideas have general applicability to thinking about how people interact generally. The economic ideas give ways to think about how much things are worth (in a broad sense of the word), how people value them, and whose responsibility problems should be. These ideas are all useful in considering group dynamics well outside the legal context. The game theory concepts are useful to anyone in any sort of business, in thinking about, and talking about, how their competitors will act and react to them. The psychological phenomena studied are immensely valuable to advertisers, and to anyone in the general public interested in recognizing the subtle tactics advertisements use. The concepts deriving from statistics are valuable to anyone thinking about what the figures people give actually mean, or don't mean. Even the jurisprudential ideas studied are often useful for argument and persuasion in general, and making one's point more effectively.This book isn't really about law, although it frequently touches upon it, and the topic of law is an undercurrent throughout. It's really about concepts that show up everywhere, not just in law: concepts useful to anyone wanting to think about how the world works, why it works the way it does, and how to successfully navigate it. It's not a long book, but it is a deep book: best digested a chapter at a time, giving time for thought about the concepts discussed to see them elsewhere in the world. (In this regard I regard it much as I regard The Federalist Papers: a book worthy of slow digestion and extra time to chew on the topics presented.)I've never been to law school and have no intention of going. I don't know how useful it is specifically for the aspiring lawyer. But I do think it's well worth reading for anyone interested in thinking deeply about the world and how we move through it. Highly recommended.

The author says he intends his book to be of interest to "law students, lawyers, scholars, and anyone else with an interest in the legal system". The pity is that most people are unaware of the impact of the legal system and its impact on their daily lives. A book like "The Legal Analyst", unfortunately, is not for the average citizen. It took me months of nibbling, reading a bit at a time, to get through these fascinating, but densely written book."The Legal Analyst" is excellent: informative, learned and challenging, all at the same time. The alternative title considered was "Thinking Like a Law Professor" and that might have been more appropriate.The value of the book is that instead of discussing rules as so many law texts do, Professor Farnsworth introduces us here - quite effectively - to tools for thinking about the law.I am not a lawyer, but lawyers are my clientele and I play a role in litigation as an expert witness and consultant. I am also an American who is very concerned about the direction of the nation and the fate of its Constitution, the very document that makes us a nation of laws.Professor Farnsworth is a gentle guide. He avoids footnotes. He doesn't use dry academic language. He is, matter of fact, pretty straightforward. But the subject matter itself, while always challenging, is sometimes dry. There are thirty chapters on the tools of legal thought, prefaced by a introduction that poses an interesting challenge. If a robber enters a bank, takes customer hostage and threatens to kill a hostage if he doesn't get $5,000, should the bank be held liable when the robber gets no money and kills the hostage? (I'm not going to tell.)On the whole, only the truly committed will make it through this book. It is not because of any lack of quality or scholarship: it is simply a difficult read. Those who do complete the trek will be rewarded with an expanded knowledge of the logic of the law.I do wish Professor Farnsworth would consider writing a version of "The Legal Analyst" for the average person - such a book is truly needed.Jerry

This is an excellent book on legal thought.I am not an attorney but I'm very interested in the law. I found this book to be thought-provoking and made me look at the law from different perspectives. I believe this book is valuable to anyone with a potential legal conflict because it will allow you to look at your issue from several angles, including how judges may think about how to solve your dispute intuitively. this book does an excellent job of showing how judges may tackle disputes by looking at the bigger picture. The author talks a lot about how a law may not discourage everyone's behavior but it could affect a small group of people making that law effective.Some of the more historic cases discussed in law school are utilized in this book to illustrate the overall concept discussed in each chapter. I particularly liked the rent seeking discussion in the book and how special interests attempt to skew the law in the political process in their favor. This book takes an economic look at the law which I believe is valuable. This book is a great standalone book for someone interested in the law but also is an excellent book to round out a legal library.My compliments to the author and the publisher for having text-to-speech enabled on the Kindle version which made my experience with this book even more pleasurable.