Preventive Law and Problem Solving

Book excerpt: Preventive Law and Problem Solving: Lawyering for the Future is designed for four audiences. First, it introduces a broad, socially connected understanding of legal systems and legal thinking to students who are considering, or just beginning, law study. Second, for those who have completed their first year of training, the book reflects on the assumptions that underpin the legal methods they have been struggling to master. Third, for those interested in legal theory, the book describes and explains a new paradigm for legal thought. Finally, practicing lawyers are offered examples of using the preventive/ problem solving approach in contract formation, project management, general business representation, domestic violence, and health care delivery. Building on the author's long-standing interest in the complex relationships between problems and the procedures employed for their resolution, the book explores: how legal problems may be prevented; how lawyers may proactively assist clients in identifying and reaching their goals; the impacts of legal methods on the people involved in a dispute; and how law can be understood as one part of an elaborately intertwined system comprised of the problems that people bring to law; the methods available to address those problems; the skills that lawyers must employ to use those procedures effectively; the ethics with which they are expected to operate those procedures; the vision of truth that propels the system; and the broader human culture within which law, lawyers, and legal methods are shaped. About the author: Thomas D. Barton is the Louis and Hermione Brown Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego. He obtained his J.D. degree from Cornell Law School, and a Ph.D. in Law from Cambridge University, where he researched problem solving within common law adjudication. Professor Barton teaches courses in problem solving and prevention, Civil Procedure, Contracts, and various topics in law and society for undergraduates. He writes and speaks primarily on legal theory and Preventive Law, and coordinates the National Center for Preventive Law, found at www.preventivelawyer.com.