Economic Methods For Lawyers

Responding to the growing importance of economic reasoning in legal scholarship, this innovative work provides an essential introduction to the economic tools which can usefully be employed in legal reasoning. It is geared specifically towards those without a great deal of exposure to economic thinking and provides law students, legal scholars and practitioners with a practical toolbox to shape their writing, understanding and case preparation. The book’s clear focus on economic methods poses a refreshing change to conventional textbooks in this area, which tend to focus on content-related theories. Recognising that it is often difficult to derive adequate conclusions for legal arguments without first understanding the methodological limitations of economic studies, this book provides a comprehensive coverage of the most important economic concepts in order to bridge this gap. These include: • game theory • public choice and social choice theory • behavioural economics • empirical research design • basic statistics. Owing to its concise and accessible style, Economic Methods for Lawyers will provide an invaluable companion for legal scholars or practitioners who wish to utilise economic methods for developing legal argument.

The purpose of this casebook is to teach the principles of microeconomics. Economic Analysis for Lawyers presumes no prior training in economics and uses the same building block approach that is found in most microeconomics principles textbooks that are used in undergraduate economics classes. This book includes excerpted cases and other materials that illustrates the applicability of the economic principles to legal disputes and public policy issues. Fundamental principles are introduced in the first four chapters. Subsequent chapters build on these fundamentals by adding a detailed and sophisticated analysis in the general areas of monopoly, externalities, information, labor markets, risk, organizational economics, and financial economics. The result is a thorough introduction to the principles of microeconomics.

This introduction to the new field of economic analysis of the law focuses on the core areas of our legal system - property, torts and accidents, contract, and crime - as well as litigation. The handbook is full of examples and is highly accessible, since no background in either law or economics is assumed and it's free of jargon, graphs, and technical material

Economic Foundations of Law (2nd ed.) provides an economic analysis of the major areas of the law: property law, torts, contracts, criminal law, civil procedure, corporation law and financial markets, taxation and labor law. In line with current trends in legal scholarship, discussion is focused on economic principles such as risk aversion, efficiency, opportunity cost, moral hazard, rent-seeking behaviour and economies of scale. Accessible, comprehensive and well written, this book uses extensive practical examples and explanations to illustrate key points. There are numerous applications to lawyers and the legal profession, with detailed discussions of subjects as diverse as the proposed market for transplantable human organs, the market for adoptions, the market for bail bonds, the unanticipated effects of Megan’s law, and issues of racial profiling. Fully updated and revised, a new chapter on labor law has also been included.

This law school casebook is organized around a set of policy puzzles and problems. It is especially important for students of civil procedure to understand the economics central to such procedure. It discusses how to predict the severity of frivolous litigation, and why some suits fail to settle and go to trial. Discovery, preclusion law, and attorney's fees are included in the economic analysis of litigation.

This law school casebook was developed by a team of professors at Harvard Law School to introduce students with little or no quantitative background to the basic analytical techniques that attorneys need to master to represent their clients effectively. This casebook presents clear explanations of decision analysis, games and information, contracting, accounting, finance, microeconomics, economic analysis of the law, fundamentals of statistics, and multiple regression analysis.

Law and Economics: Theory, Cases, and Other Materials is a comprehensive introduction to the subject area of law and economics, with stimulating in depth discussion of actual case law by two leading scholars in the field. It provides a clear description of the key points of law and economics across various substantive areas of law, combining the traditional approach to the study of law and economics with new important insights from behavioral economics and competing theories. Importantly, Law and Economics artfully introduces and connects theory to practice to provide a coherent picture rather than a patch-like studying experience. Using detailed case-notes, comments and examples, Law and Economics explains why future lawyers should care about economic analysis of the law and how economics can and should play a role in litigation and conflict resolution. This important new casebook not only makes law and economics accessible to students but also indubitably establishes the importance of law and economics in a globalized world. Highlights of the First Edition: Introduces students to basic tools (e.g., game theory and decision theory) and concepts (e.g., efficiency criteria) using simple and innovative methods Facilitates the understanding of complicated concepts by providing the theoretical backgrounds as well as clear explanations, examples, exercises, and comprehensive comments and notes that do not require any background in math or economics Allows readers to test their understanding by providing practice questions with full answers Carefully selected cases, with discussion emphasizing the economic rationales underlying decisions and demonstrating how these rationales impact decisions Marries the virtues of a textbook (explaining the theoretical underpinning of different economic notions and how they relate to different legal doctrines) to those of a casebook by tying concepts to actual decisions Adopts a modern approach that covers competing theories as they relate to specific decisions and theories Includes methodology chapters where the same methodology (e.g., decision making, game theory, supply and demand) is used to analyze different areas of the law, as well as subject matter chapters in which specific areas of the law (e.g., property) are analyzed using different methodologies A modular structure, allowing the professor to pick and cover materials in almost any order, to skip certain materials and to focus on court decisions, the theory, or both Professors and students will benefit from: The use of alternative intuitive methods to explain theories The use of simple algebra to teach the most complex subjects The artful combination of theory with a practical approach that ties the economic concepts (including game theory and decision theory) to specific subject matters, legal rules and specific decisions In-depth discussion of decisions and how they could they be explained or argued differently in light of the theoretical concepts reviewed The use of summary boxes to recap complicated concepts Fantastic notes and practical questions following cases