Law School for Everyone

By: The Great Courses, Edward K. Cheng, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Molly Bishop Shadel, Peter J. Smith

Narrated by: Edward K. Cheng, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Molly Bishop Shadel, Peter J. Smith

Length: 25 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

The skills lawyers wield in courtrooms across the country are the result of years of study. As much as we'd like to cultivate these same skills, the truth is that you cannot know how a lawyer thinks and works without studying the law itself.

Now there's an easier way to get the same foundational knowledge as lawyers - without the enormous time and financial commitment. Over the span of 48 lectures, four experienced lawyers and teachers recreate key parts of the first-year law student experience, introducing you to main areas of law most every beginning student studies.

You'll start with 12 lectures on litigation and legal practice that offer eye-opening answers to many questions about the art and craft of legislation. In the second 12 lectures, you'll learn how criminal law and procedure - an area of law dramatized by countless TV shows - really works. Additional lectures investigate the civic procedures courts follow to resolve disputes about substantive rights and examine broader questions any system of litigation must address. And 12 lectures are devoted entirely to the stranger-than-fiction topic of tort law.

Enriched with famous cases from the annals of American law and powerful arguments by some of history's most successful lawyers, these lectures offer access to an often intimidating, surprisingly accessible, and civically important field.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2017 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2017 The Great Courses

Fantastic series!

This is an excellent and interesting lecture series by 4 eloquent professors. It’s packed with information, so be ready for dense lectures. The Audible app on my phone didn’t show that I had access to the booklet PDF. I discovered that only when I signed in online. I would have preferred to know this sooner. The PDF doesn’t include all the important info that the professors discuss, so I took additional notes.
Professor Molly Bishop Shadel talked too fast, so it was difficult to take notes.
Professor Peter Smith could have described a clearer outline of jurisdiction. I found the rules and limits hard to follow.
It would’ve been useful to have a 15-second rewind option in addition to the 30-second option.

Enjoyable but biased

Comprehensive and enjoyable to listen to. Presentation is well done and organization easy to follow. However the political bias of the lecturers is thinly veiled and insults the intelligence of the listener.

Very Entertaining Courses

This title in fact consists of 4 independent courses. I would rate 3 of them as excellent. The other one, the course on civil procedures, also has really good lectures, but the materials themselves are a bit dry, compared to the more exciting criminal and tort cases from the other lectures. I usually hesitate about buying a Great Courses lecture series that include multiple lecturers, as the samples do not cover all lecturers. But I really enjoyed all 4 courses within this title. All 4 professors were very passionate and provided clear and easy-to-understand lectures in their courses.

One thing that stands out is that the courses are very entertaining. I am a big fan of legal TV shows. Of course it is just my personal opinion, but I find these courses no less entertaining than the TV shows. There is just as much drama in the real cases as in the fictional shows. And I really enjoyed the background information and the social/economic/legal analysis for the legal cases and processes, which one do not often get from TV dramas. I highly recommend this title to anyone who enjoys legal TV shows, fictions, or just wants to learn about the law.
#Inspiring #ThoughProvoking #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Interesting overview of legal thought

I’m a legal layperson with an academic interest in law. This was a great high level overview, and all four instructors were engaging and interesting

Good to know

Tort law towards the end wasn't as exciting to me personally as it seemed to be to the lecturer. On the other hand, some of the constitutional law was actually pretty scary.

Great introduction

I'm prepping for law school and this was a great introduction. the presenters are very well versed and cover the best topics to explain the fundamentals of law.

Lose the disclaimer

Only drawback with this course is the legal disclaimer repeated over and over before each chapter. It is on part with prescription drug advertising. Skip ahead 30 seconds as the music ends at the end of a lecture and it will take you to the beginning of the next.

Phenomenal intro to the law

I'll be entering law school soon and found this lecture series to be a priceless investment. I learned more than anything before about the law and enjoyed listening to every minute of this. Anyone going to law school needs to hear this masterpiece of scholarship!

Excellent Summary

Thus is a great summary for the non-lawyer. I highly recommend it. Only thing I wish would have been included is a discussion of lawyer remuneration associated with torts. The professors studiously avoided the elephant in the room...lawyers using torts to enrich themselves.

Interesting

Worth a listen, the speakers give a cross section of law and how they work.