Virginia’s July Bar Exam results are announced each October (for all those that received theirs on the 9th, know I had to wait until the 31st). For our new lawyers, or anyone else, I benefited greatly from several books I read early in my career. Here they are in no particular order:
Mark Herrmann, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law (ABA 1st ed. 2006) – Mr. Herrmann has a way of teaching new lawyers rules for practice that seemingly come from a “curmudgeon” of a big law partner. It teaches young lawyers everything from how to leave a voicemail (perhaps this advice is dated), how to be respectful of paralegals and administrative assistants’ time, and how to write. The book can easily be read in a day or one sitting. Chapter 1, titled “How to Write: a Memorandum from a Curmudgeon,” is particularly good (https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba-cms-dotorg/products/inv/book/358871375/5310467_sample.pdf). The way the Curmudgeon explains how to describe a case in a brief is still my default method, and I zealously strive to follow all three of his “assumptions” about associate work product: no typographical errors, no spelling errors, and no citation errors. I have purchased this book for at least one junior colleague.
Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (Thomson/West 2008) – I bought this book in 2015 or so when I first started practicing because a senior associate at a Megafirm (or, his staff attorney) was such a better writer than me, and I wanted to improve my writing–both at the technical or tactical level and the broader strategic level. Making Your Case is broken down into general principles of argumentation, rules for legal reasoning, rules for briefing, and rules for oral argument. Several Garner books I list here are useful because the table of contents is so artfully organized and described that you can pickup the book and skim it to refresh your memory of those aforementioned principles/rules, which are timeless. Some examples I particularly enjoy and see others fail to follow: know the rule or standard of decision, think syllogistically, and describe and cite authorities with scrupulous accuracy.
Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: the Interpretation of Legal Texts (Thomson/West 2012) – So much of our law is statutory, and this is a realization I had very early in my career litigating cases under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (and its various extensions of that law to other industries). Whenever I confront a statutory interpretation problem, after I read the text using the rules outlined in that book (including a read paying particular attention to things like conjunctions, commas, etc.), I think about the canons outlined in this book. I then go to a master word document I ripped from a website years ago containing Virginia citations to these principles, and my research / writing begins. Do I use this book daily now? No. I do refer to it however several times a year.
Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers (O’Connors 2d ed. 2015) – I can tell when other lawyers have read Butterick. Reading this book signals to me you pay attention to small details. Like the next book I will discuss, if you are at a small firm without a manual governing how pleadings should be published, just adopt all of the typography rules in Butterick’s book (unless you are in a jurisdiction like the EDVA that demands deviation from his advice, such as the use of “true” 24 point double spacing).
Bryan A. Garner, The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (West 3d ed. 2013) – Does the footnote go outside of the period or inside? Should I write out numbers in my brief or use numerals? What is an opinion letter and what should it look like? Refer to the Redbook. Again, like for Butterick, make this your default style guide in the absence of firm-mandated style guides or the say-so of whoever sings your paychecks.
Thomas A. Mauet & Stephen D. Easton, Trial Techniques and Trials (Aspen 12th ed. 2025) — I can clearly remember my boss giving me a very worn copy of his Mauet book (I believe it was the Third edition) along with a redwell containing the first case he assigned me to try in General District Court (which I believe ended up being the first case I tried in Circuit Court before a jury). Mauet was so valuable to me as a young lawyer because it gave you scripts for how to do various things at trial–authenticating evidence, moving exhibits into evidence, impeaching someone by a prior inconsistent statement, etc. The examples Mauet used in the Third edition, and still uses in the Twelfth edition, are ultra practical in so far as they include examples of frequently litigated issues–civil cases of who had the red light or right of way, construction delay cases, criminal assault cases, etc. Put differently, cases many lawyers may find themselves taking to trial. Mauet also taught me how to think about preparing for trial. For example–and maybe this is obvious–I still always think about how I am going to get testimony, exhibits, etc. into evidence, and what objections I may need to anticipate. Mauet’s forward to the Twelfth edition suggests that trial lawyers read the book cover to cover, then refer back to sections as needed. I certainly did not read it cover to cover as a baby lawyer, but I began doing so this year. It is a slow read only because I stop to highlight and re-read various passages.