How do lawyers think through a case?
HAYWARD, Calif., Oct. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Whatever you think about lawyers, they think differently than you. Architects design, doctors diagnose, engineers build, and lawyers make sense.
For anyone who is contemplating the study of law, or wished they had done so, or is in the midst of such an endeavor, this book will provide rewards of insight into how the lawyer thinks through problems in a legal context. For human behavior is complicated, and actions with significant consequences (like punching you in the nose) while simple on the surface, can be quite complex the deeper we look.
Motive, responsibility, and intervening forces can provide a subtle fabric of explanation.
Because the central concept that propels human action is intent, and intent lies hidden between the ears, we need a considerable organizing intellectual effort to get to the bottom of why somebody did something. That sounds obscure. Better to think of it like this – I can punch you in the nose because I don't like you, or because I'm stopping you from doing thus unto me, or because I'm drunk, or I've mistaken you for someone more evil or on and on. And of course we know why the distinctions are important. Because we, as a society, want to respond appropriately and differently depending on why I punched.
Trained to hear a barrage of poor prose attempting to describe something that happened, or should have happened, lawyers must translate a story into legal theory. It requires not only knowledge of laws, but the process of legal inquiry, understanding of human behavior, how the world works and a great dose of creative insight.
The job of a lawyer is to make legal sense of a complicated world. Lawyers make sense.
The Death of Jeffrey Stapleton is based on, introduces and illustrates a technically sound, testable and easy to demonstrate explanation of how people think and act that lays a foundation for psychology to become a natural science rather than merely an art. This has profound implications for litigation where psychology is involved.
The Death of Jeffrey Stapleton by Hugh Gibbons, professor of law at the University of New Hampshire, is available at Internet bookstores and can be previewed 100% at Google Books: http://tinyurl.com/JeffreyStapleton.
Contact:
Dag Forssell, Hayward, CA +1 510 727-0377, Email