To win in court you must master the elements of legal logic--the ultimate tool of persuasion in the courtroom. In Logic for Lawyers: A Guide to Clear Legal Thinking, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert tells how to use legal reasoning to persuade judges and juries. A 30-year veteran of the bench, Aldisert helps litigators understand and apply the elements of legal logic. Using these skills, you can argue more persuasively--both in briefs and before the court. And just as critically, you can also expose flaws in adversaries' arguments. The result? A competitive edge in the courtroom. Rather than miring readers in exotic formulas and theories often found in logic texts, Aldisert explains in broad strokes the basics of logic and its application to legal thinking. You'll gain important insight into the mental processes we use in "thinking like a lawyer."

Logic for Lawyers: A Guide to Clear Legal Thinking

Aldisert, Ruggero J.

Reference

Clark, Boardman, Callaghan

Judge Aldisert offers insight on whether to appeal, the likelihood of success, and how to improve your brief writing and oral argument. Learn what state and federal judges expect from lawyers during the appellate process and how to avoid common criticisms of written and oral arguments.

Winning on Appeal: Better Briefs and Oral Argument

Natl Inst for Trial Advocacy

“Judges come to their robes bearing the stigmata of past experience.”If this old saying is true, then this book describes the stigmata of Ruggero J. Aldisert, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge, a distinguished member of the Greatest Generation who’s still active as a judge on the second highest court in the land, just a notch below the U.S. Supreme Court. There is a huge sweep in these pages. Born in 1919, the author takes the reader from his early childhood to 1968, when he first put on robes as a U.S. Circuit Judge.You’ll find no stodgy writing here, nary a “whereas” and “aforesaid,” but it’s what the author says in his preface–a great-grandfather sitting back with the young ones and reminiscing how it was to grow up before dial telephones and when the first radio was a crystal set powered with two batteries and you listened with a set of earphones.But it’s more than family memoirs; there’s a lot of history set in the Twenties, and Thirties, and most of the time it wasn’t to the tune of “Happy Days are Here Again.”Judge Aldisert grew up as the son of an Italian immigrant in a Pennsylvania steel mill and coal mining town, remembers the Twenties when men worked 12-hour shifts, except every other Sunday when it was a 24-hour shift, came face to face with the Great Depression, the spread of world conflict during his 1937-1941 college years, and describes World War II service as Marine Corps officer in the Pacific.He gives an insider’s view of a lawyer who tried both civil and criminal cases, of life as a Pittsburgh trial court judge, and of the rocky road to nomination by President Lyndon B. Johnson and confirmation by the U.S. Senate in 1968.The opening page is a harbinger of things to come. His mother has her arms around the author, then aged three, and his brother one year older. She is sobbing, “Please don’t hurt my babies,” as they peered through her bedroom window at a procession of hooded and robed members of the Ku Klux Klan who walked in a silent circle in the Aldise

Road to the Robes: A Federal Judge Recollects Young Years & Early Times

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

AuthorHouse

Almost the Truth: A Novel of the Forties and the Sixties

The setting is New York City in 1963 where the protagonist, Victor Mancuso, is a prominent lawyer. His good friend and client, Alex Reinmann has been kidnapped in Italy. In Rome, during the Nazi occupation in June of 1944, the kidnappers served as freedom fighters with Alex, who had been a secret operative with the OSS, a United States intelligence agency. on the day of Rome's liberation, Alex confiscated from the fleeing fascists a supply of diamonds and other jewels, and buried them in the countryside outside of Rome. He reported this incident to his fellow partisans who would become his kidnappers years later. the kidnappers believed that Alex could lead them to the buried fortune. But after questioning Alex at length about the location of the fortune, the kidnappers finally decided he truthfully did not know its whereabouts. Fearing prosecution for kidnapping if they released Alex, they decided to kill him. the plot was foiled when Alex was rescued by a combination of the Italian Military PoliceCthe Carabinieri, headed by the beautiful Sergeant Regina GraziellaCand a group of American private detectives led by Victor. After the rescue, a congressional committee in the United States, as well as certain indignant members of the Carabinieri, alleged that Alex was lying under oath when he denied ever recovering the jewels. A resulting indictment of Alex for perjury took place in New York. Victor volunteered to represent Alex at trial to clear the name of his client and close friend.

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Since it was first published over a decade ago, Winning on Appeal has been adopted by top-flight law schools for appellate advocacy courses. It also has become a popular desk reference on how to write an effective brief and deliver a persuasive oral argument. In this long-awaited Second Edition, Ruggero J. Aldisert, a forty-year veteran of the federal appeals bench, fundamentally reorganizes the book. By creating twenty-five chapters in place of the previous seventeen, Aldisert creates a wonderfully instructive how-to manual for the appellate advocate and a must volume for those who select appellate advocates. 
In the Second Edition, Part 1, "The Theory and Criticisms of Written and Oral Appellate Advocacy," retains the same format as the earlier editions except that the tables of statistics are updated. The book continues its unique approach by consolidating current empirical data on the odds of prevailing on appeal or having a case orally argued. Part 2, "Technical Requirements for Briefs" contains a chapter on jurisdiction as well as a chapter on issue preservation and standards of review. 
The major revisions to the Second Edition appear in Part 3 and Part 4. Aldisert designed the chapters in these sections to identify discrete requirements for an effective brief or argument, and to explain how to meet these prerequisites. Chapter 23, "How Top-Flight Appellate Lawyers Prepare" is new to the Second Edition. This chapter contains advice from outstanding appellate lawyers, true masters in oral advocacy, on how to prepare for oral argument. 
Throughout the Second Edition of Winning on Appeal, nineteen current chief justices of state courts, nine chief judges of U.S. Courts of Appeals, more than twenty U.S. Circuit judges, and state appellate judges contribute their thoughts on how to write a brief and how to argue a case-information that is not available in any other publication or resource. 
From cover to cover, Winning on Appeal is the quintessential handbook on how to write a brief and argue an appeal. Like removing the back of a watch to see what makes it tick, this book looks behind the bench in appellate courtrooms and behind chambers’ doors to expose exactly what the judges want to read and hear from lawyers. In an easy-to-read style, Judge Aldisert draws the perfect roadmap for the attorney who wants to win on appeal.

Winning on Appeal: Better Briefs & Oral Argument

Legal Education

NITA