California Civil Litigation

California Civil Litigation, fifth edition, is designed to provide paralegal students and practicing paralegals with information, skills, and experience. It follows the litigation process chronologically from initial client questions and contracts, to ethical issues, through the pleading and discovery phases, to trial, post-trial and appeal. Each phase of litigation is explored through official forms and drafted documents and each chapter includes highlighted glossary words and definitions to enable the reader to learn the technical language of litigation. In addition to the usual probing discussion questions, each chapter includes online projects requiring the reader to locate and analyze relevant Internet material.

The essential civil litigation handbook devoted to the "HOW TO's " of California procedure. The California Code of Civil Procedure, California Rules of Court, and Judicial Council forms are combined so that the reader learns for any given task: which form to use, how to complete it, and how and when to file and serve it. This step-by-step litigation handbook is used by attorneys, paralegals, and legal secretaries both as a quick reference and as a training tool, and has been adopted as a text by several California college paralegal and legal secretarial programs. Additionally, law librarians of numerous California county law libraries keep it on reserve to help self-represented litigants. Updated at least annually to reflect new rules and forms, the book contains over 390 pages explaining the various phases of a California civil case. Chapters include: Appearance by Plaintiff (preparing the Complaint and all required forms, filing and serving by all allowable methods); Filing and Service (filing and serving documents throughout the case); Default by Defendant (entering a default and obtaining default judgment); Appearance by Defendant (preparing, filing, and serving answers and cross-complaints); Motions (preparing regular motions, discovery motions, ex parte applications, demurrers, and motions to strike); Discovery (setting up depositions of parties and non-parties, preparing, serving, and responding to requests for admission, interrogatories, and requests for production); Settlement and Dismissal (notifying the court of settlement and dismissing the case); Pre-Trial (preparing case management documentation and subpoenaing witnesses); and Judgment and Enforcement (placing liens on real estate, noticing judgment debtor exams, obtaining costs of suit).