Preparing for this blog...

[This post was meant to run last Tuesday but due to health issues, I was unable to use the PC]

As I discussed in the first post, I am a layperson when it comes to the law. Like many, most of what I think I know comes from watching movies and television. I know that such exposure has certainly skewed my view of how the law, politics and legal proceedings should work. As I was watching the episode of 'Boston Legal' that I am planning to lead off with in two weeks, I came to the conclusion that being a layperson with an entertainment media-skewed perception of the law isn't sufficient for what I want to accomplish with this blog. I need to cast aside my misunderstandings and reactions that are based upon those skewed perceptions and ground myself in the fundamentals of the law and legal research.

To that end, I have obtained two books. The first is 'Law 101' and is meant to provide an unbiased understanding of the law and the United States legal system. Topics include constitutional law, constitutional rights, the litigation process, personal injury/tort law, contract law, property law, criminal law and criminal procedure. It's not meant to be the end-all, be-all of law knowledge. In a way, that's one of the points it seeks to drive home - that the law is vast and hard for anyone to understand it all, but you are well-served if you understand the fundamentals of what the various types of law are about in order to understand and attempt to interpret how they apply. I hope to have a review up on this book sometime next week, but even written for a layperson, it's a dense read.

The second book is 'Legal Research for Beginners' and focuses on the steps required to thoroughly research and understand a legal issue. Topics start at defining the legal issue by summarizing the problem to be addressed, how to learn about the topic, how to find cases and read them, determining what laws affect your issue and how to organize your research to present findings. Needless to say, I don't expect this book to be for the attention-impaired or those who only enjoy light reading. Frankly, the scope of getting into this is quite daunting to me and while I worry that it may all be more than I can absorb, it's important to me to understand it so that I present information appropriately and on-point with the issue I am discussing. That's one way for me to help try and present information in a more complete and balanced way for discussion, if I can.

All that said, I don't think I could finish both of these books in the next week so I'm going to focus on finishing 'Law 101' and then will work on researching and writing up my first issue then read 'Legal Research for Beginners' while working on future issues, putting what I learn from it into action to better my approach.  I hope you'll bear with me. I think the payoff will be worth it.