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Law books lawyers can’t do without and why

You could fill a library with things they don’t show you in graduate school. You don’t learn how to run a business, how to build meaningful relationships with customers, or how to handle a lot of work. While school might have shown you how to produce passing results for the legal defense test, there is quite a lot more that goes into running an effective practice than working cases. Fortunately, a number of pioneering lawyers have published works that cover topics not taught in law school, such as maintaining a healthy mental state and acquiring more clients in a saturated market.

The following are some of the most important books about lawyers you should read.

Intestate Administration

The procedure outlined above also applies to intestate administration. However, the difference with intestate administration is that the deceased person did not write a Will to guide the administration of his/her estate. Under such circumstances, the family reaches an agreement on whom the personal representatives/administrators of the estate should be and the nominated administrators take on the role of the executors of the estate by applying for the letters of administration which play the same role as a grant of probate.


Under an application for letters of administration, there is a procedure for the publication of the estate where the details of the Estate such as the names and addresses of the proposed administrators to the estate are published against the name of the deceased person. It serves as a notice to all interested parties that the administration of the estate will be granted to the appointed administrators in the absence of any opposition. Advocacy comes from the Latin Advocare meaning – to call to; to 
summon counsel; to consult for legal advice. In its ecclesiastical connotation it 
means to avow; to admit a clerk to a benefice – thus advocati ecclesiae or 
advocates of the church were patrons retained to argue the cases of the church 
as pleaders or to attend to its law matters. In Roman law, patrons, pleaders, 
rhetoricians and speakers were called and referred to as Advocati. From the 
Latin we got the English word Advocate. In the verb form to advocate means to 
speak in favour of; to defend by argument; to support; to vindicate or 
recommend publicly. In its noun form, an advocate generally speaking means 
one who assists, defends, or pleads for another. Legally defined, an advocate is 
one who renders legal advice and aid and pleads the cause of another before a 
court or tribunal. It thus means a person learned in the law and duly admitted to 
practise (Solicitors are admitted but barristers are called); a person who assists 
his client with advice and pleads for him in open court. What then is 
Advocacy? The short and simple answer is – what the advocate does. 
Referring to the lawyer advocate it is what he does both in his chambers and in 
open court.
comers to the Bar something of the art of rhetoric, something of the dazzling 
oratory of an Edmund Burke, or a Robert Sheridan or a Charles Fox during the 
impeachment of Warren Hastings. Their speeches detailing the high crimes 
and misdemeanours of the hitherto illustrious Warren Hastings produced an 
almost incredible and sweeping sensation. The great eloquence of Lord 
Cowper, that great whig lawyer, who never opened his lips in public without 
universal applause or failed to hold, as if spell-bound, the hearts and 
understanding of his audience, testifies to the force behind and to the power of 
the spoken words. The compelling oratory of Lord Erskine bent on “breaking 
the rod of the oppressors” or going back still further to the Roman jurist – to 
Cicero, the prince of ancient orators and his defence of Cluentius in his “Pro 
Cluentio” which was oratory at its best and advocacy at its highest – a 
consummate blend of humour and pathos, of narrative argument, of description 
and declamation – going through the speeches of these famous pleaders one 
arrives at the inevitable conclusion that the most important element in all
advocacy is the art of attractive and persuasive speech on all occasions that 
call for its exercise. But the newcomer to the Bar should be seriously warned 
against empty rhetoric. It never wins any case, for whatever the brilliance of a 
speech, as such, its success must, in the final analysis, rest on a solid foundation 
of facts. A lawyer’s reputation must therefore be built on the rock of real
professional knowledge, ability and acquirement rather than on sandy and 
shaky foundation of mere words however ornate. Modern advocacy therefore 
implies in addition to forensic eloquence, a proper grasp of the principles of law 

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