U.S. Legal Practice Skills for International Law Students

U.S. Legal Practice Skills for International Law Students is ideal for training international law students in the fundamental practice skills utilized by U.S. lawyers. It functions as a "global legal skills academy" for international students who have or are currently studying American substantive law, but desire a deeper understanding of legal practice basics such as professional responsibility, problem solving, interviewing and counseling, negotiation styles, and law firm and courtroom culture. It focuses on those practice skills necessary to perform the tasks common to international law students and lawyers working with American corporations, law firms, and individual American clients: drafting memoranda, contracts, and correspondence. For international students familiar with their own legal systems, the book systematically explains such distinctive elements of American common law as a dual court system, stare decisis, case synthesis, and case law reasoning.

U.S. Legal Practice Skills for International Law Students incorporates a multicultural perspective, including discussions of cross-cultural considerations impacting the practice of law. The chapters are clear and concise, major points are summarized as bulleted highlights, and extensive use is made of headings and subheadings. Based on established legal skills pedagogy, each chapter begins with a client hypothetical and ends with a discussion of the application of the material to resolve the client's problem. The text also includes an extensive selection of sample documents, a glossary of U.S. legal concepts, a link to past Multistate Practice Tests with the bar examiners' test sheets, and a topically organized appendix of resources. The book reflects the authors' experience as lawyers, as professors of practice skills for international LL.M. students at the University of Michigan Law School, and as the creators and first visiting professors in the legal practice program for the first Western-style law school in China.

PowerPoint slides are available upon adoption. Sample slides from the full 274-slide presentation are available to view here. Email bhall@cap-press.com for more information.

Students from other countries have a special set of hurdles to overcome in order to become effective in an American legal practice environment. In this comprehensive volume, the authors have identified nine dimensions of practice in which those hurdles present themselves. Those dimensions span the full range of attorney skills—from legal reasoning, to different forms of legal writing, to different forms of live interaction. They have supplied teachers of these skills with an invaluable set of materials—both their own analysis and sample documents—always keeping in mind the distinctive presuppositions that international students may often bring to the challenge of becoming effective lawyers in the United States."
— Jeffrey S. Lehman, Chancellor and Founding Dean, Peking University School of Transnational Law

This book is much needed. It offers a comprehensive, thoughtful, and accessible introduction to actual law practice. It is useful to not only foreign law students but also all law students. I recommend it highly: more than a casebook, it is a compendium of skills."
— Frank H. Wu, Chancellor & Dean, University of California Hastings College of the Law