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.

What is public interest law? How effective is it? What are the limits to litigation as a mechanism for conflict resolution? In this study, economists, lawyers, and sociologists evaluate an institutional form that is new to American society and, indeed, to the world--the public interest law (PIL) organization. The book introduces the reader to the structure, resources, and activities of this "nonprofit industry," and also to the factors that affect PIL firms in their choices of cases and methods of handling them. The authors examine PIL's vast range of contemporary public policy concerns. These incude such general topics as the environment, consumerism, housing, employment discrimination, medical care, occupational health and safety, education finance, and taxation. A number of base studies are presented, and a method for economic analysis and evaluation is introduced and applied. The study points to PIL's success in advocating under-represented interests, in winning courtroom decisions, and in translating legal victories into reallocations of resources. At the same time, it notes the bias of PIL towards test-case litigation, a propensity to focus on judicial victories rather than on real social change, and a tendency to use lawyers even when other types of professionals might be more effective. Many of these problems stem from uncertainty of funding and legal restrictions on "nonprofit" organizations. The result is a set of hurdles that distracts PIL firms from their principal goals. The authors do not limit themselves to PIL, but comment on the effectiveness of legal instruments as devices for social change, and on the behavior of the voluntary nonprofit sector, a little-studied portion of the economy. The book presents a fresh approach to the study of both collective-type economic problems and institutional setting in which public interest law works. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

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

Economics for Competition Lawyers provides a comprehensive explanation of the economic principles most relevant for competition law. Written specifically for competition lawyers, it uses real-world examples, is non-technical, and explains the key points from first principles.

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.

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.