Opinions

Opinions-Essays on Lawyering, Litigation and Arbitration, the Placebo Effect, Chutzpah, and Related Matters is insightful, informative, fun, and funny. Opinions collects succinct law-related observations by two long-time practitioners-one a lawyer, the other an arbitrator and mediator, and both sometime law school teachers. They share the sensibility of Mark Twain's words, appearing as the book's epigraph: "To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler-and less trouble." Opinions is for lawyers, judges, mediators, arbitrators, negotiators, witnesses, and everyone else whose fortunes put them in the path of the legal profession. Opinions is for those contemplating legal careers, those who regret not going to law school, and those who regret going. Opinions is for those fascinated with-or repelled by-the machinery of dispute resolution, its lofty goals and its mundane idiosyncrasies. Opinions is for those who believe that words matter. Opinions is for those who appreciate Ambrose Bierce's definition of litigation: "A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage." As eminent law professor and arbitrator Theodore J. St. Antoine writes in the foreword, Opinions authors Goldman and Israel have produced a Bramble Bush for the 21st century, only "much more accessible" and "funnier."