Street Law

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm’s plush offices. When it is all over, the man’s blood is splattered on Michael’s face—and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived—and where society’s powerless need an advocate for justice. But there’s one break Michael can’t make: from a secret that has floated up from the depths of Drake & Sweeney, from a confidential file that is now in Michael’s hands, and from a conspiracy that has already taken lives. Now Michael’s former partners are about to become his bitter enemies. Because to them, Michael Brock is the most dangerous man on the streets. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

Toronto prides itself on being “the world’s most diverse city,” and its officials seek to support this diversity through programs and policies designed to promote social inclusion. Yet this progressive vision of law often falls short in practice, limited by problems inherent in the political culture itself. In Everyday Law on the Street, Mariana Valverde brings to light the often unexpected ways that the development and implementation of policies shape everyday urban life. Drawing on four years spent participating in council hearings and civic association meetings and shadowing housing inspectors and law enforcement officials as they went about their day-to-day work, Valverde reveals a telling transformation between law on the books and law on the streets. She finds, for example, that some of the democratic governing mechanisms generally applauded—public meetings, for instance—actually create disadvantages for marginalized groups, whose members are less likely to attend or articulate their concerns. As a result, both officials and citizens fail to see problems outside the point of view of their own needs and neighborhood. Taking issue with Jane Jacobs and many others, Valverde ultimately argues that Toronto and other diverse cities must reevaluate their allegiance to strictly local solutions. If urban diversity is to be truly inclusive—of tenants as well as homeowners, and recent immigrants as well as longtime residents—cities must move beyond micro-local planning and embrace a more expansive, citywide approach to planning and regulation.

The first book of its kind published in the UK, Street Law: Theory and Practice is the ideal companion for all students engaging in credit-bearing or non-credit bearing Street Law projects. Highly-accessible and student-focussed, it teaches readers not only how to successfully design, deliver, and reflect on Street Law sessions, but also the theory behind this practice. It covers a full and diverse range of topics, beginning with initial project design and ending at post-project reflection and evaluation, with a host of topics including interactive teaching techniques, ethics and problem-solving in between. Designed to be read chronologically or as standalone chapters, it is the perfect textbook for students at each stage of their Street Law journey. Including quotes from active Street Law practitioners and coverage of contemporary Street Law topics, such as the housing crisis, the text is a fully up-to-date resource for today's law students. Its original workbook format, including an abundance of reflective questions, activities and prompts, with space included for students to write their responses, ensures every reader develops not only a comprehensive insight of this important form of public legal education, but also their own learning and practice.

Can you be arrested for wearing a thong if you're ugly? Unknowingly renting a house to drug dealers? Becoming too familiar with your Halloween pumpkin? The Street Law Handbook answers these questions and more, as lawyer Neeraja Viswanathan cracks the tough nut of small-time law enforcement and lays the rules bare. Exactly how much pot do you need to have in your possession to warrant a felony conviction? What merits a strip search and exactly how much is an officer allowed to inspect? Can you really have sex in a cab? If you've ever felt the desire to act impulsively but weren't sure of the consequences, this is the book to consult. Combining straightforward legal information, hilarious true tales of small-time crimes and handy legal definitions that will, if nothing else, make you a smarter Law & Order viewer, The Street Law Handbook is a fun and informative layman's guide that puts the ease in legalese.

InLawyers, Families, and Businesses: The Shaping of a Bay Street Law Firm, Faskens 1863-1963, noted lawyer and historian, Ian Kyer, provides a superbly researched and fascinating study of the origins and development of the law firm now known as Fasken Martineau DuMoulin. Beginning in colonial Toronto in 1863 where two young lawyers, William Henry Beatty and Edward Marion Chadwick, established their partnership in "one room, half furnished," Kyer follows the first 100 years of mergers, redirections, challenges, and advances that today have resulted in an international firm of over 700 lawyers practising on three continents. In the process of giving readers a view of the evolution of the practice of law in Canada as seen from the perspective of one particular firm, Kyer also provides in-depth and original accounts of the interrelationships among law firms, family connections, business development, and political influence in Canadian history. This is neither a dry academic work nor a self-congratulatory firm history. It is an insightful, compelling, social history of one of Canada's most important law firms.

Law and Order offers a valuable new study of the political and social history of the 1960s. It presents a sophisticated account of how the issues of street crime and civil unrest enhanced the popularity of conservatives, eroded the credibility of liberals, and transformed the landscape of American politics. Ultimately, the legacy of law and order was a political world in which the grand ambitions of the Great Society gave way to grim expectations. In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as law and order emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests. Flamm documents how conservatives constructed a persuasive message that argued that the civil rights movement had contributed to racial unrest and the Great Society had rewarded rather than punished the perpetrators of violence. The president should, conservatives also contended, promote respect for law and order and contempt for those who violated it, regardless of cause. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, liberals either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil disorder, which by 1968 seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.