Top 25 Best Books for Lawyers: Recommended by Legal Professionals
Among the many well-known qualities a good lawyer possesses are commercial awareness, continuous growth, and learning. Reading the best books for lawyers helps legal professionals stay on top of their game.
Today, lawyers strive to deepen their understanding of current technology, its development, global business principles, and the latest industry trends, including those that directly impact their law firms and customers.
As a business-facing organization, law firms place a high amount of value on employees that learn fast and stay up-to-date by reading legal books. Those legal professionals who know their clientele from top to bottom, and are able to take that knowledge to build strong relationships with it, always succeed in the long run.
As a legal professional who strives to stay up-to-date, you might be facing the need to answer the following questions:
- What specific legal information and law books do I need right now?
- Which books for lawyers would be right for me now?
- Where can I get the best law books for non lawyers to broaden my horizons?
Law isn’t readily accessible, and at times, it is difficult to know where to begin. Luckily, a magic pillar exists and all you need to do is READ. The right legal books and journals work best without making your brain hurt.
In this blog, we’ve prepared a comprehensive catalog of the best law books for lawyers and non lawyers that will guide you through 2022, revealing all the tips and tricks that most law schools just leave out.
Best books for lawyers on running a law firm
1. How to Like Being a Lawyer: Thriving in BigLaw, SmallLaw & Solopreneurship, H.S. Orr
Regardless of your chosen direction, this book guides new graduates through practicing law and explains how to build a path to opening their own law firm. The book shares insights on how to become a happy lawyer operating in the legal arena.
2. The Tools of Argument, Joel P. Trachtman
This book reveals the gaps between the law and common sense and provides an understanding of how to become an effective practicing lawyer by using the power of words to their fullest, both when collaborating with clients or in court.
3. Best Historical Case Study: And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney
On your path to becoming a good lawyer, you have to understand what happens when justice doesn’t work in the right direction and vigilante mobs take their place. This book reveals the murder case of 13-year-old Mary Phagan and Leo Frank, a Jewish man convicted of her murder mainly based on one witness’s testimony.
4. Attorney and Law Firm Guide to the Business of Law: Planning and Operating for Survival and Growth, Edward Poll
The book is for legal professionals who are thinking about starting their own legal practice. The book breaks down the key business lessons from successful law firms and explains how to operate the basic factors of a business.
5. The Client Centered Law Firm: How to Succeed in an Experience-Driven World, Jack Newton
According to this book, lawyers concentrate too much on marketing and daily routines. It gives actionable insights on how to narrow down the focus to the client and their happiness.
6. The New Law Business Model: Build a Lucrative Law Practice That You (and Your Clients) Love, Ali Katz
This book is for lawyers who don’t want to work in a bigger legal practice and are looking to minimize the risk of burnout. The author explains the philosophy of their firm and explains the working methods for attracting clients and building consistent revenue.
Best books for non lawyers and new lawyers
7. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
This book isn’t just a high school classic story. It grabs your attention from the first page and is considered to be one of the best law books for non lawyers. The story of Atticus Finch resonates with most attorneys by revealing the power of making and winning arguments and showing how the law can deliver or fail to deliver justice.
8. Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, Bryan A. Garner and Antonin Scalia
This book demonstrates to lawyers how to make precise and compelling arguments and legally reason with judges and juries. It teaches legal professionals how to handle the challenges of multiple trials, motions, and hearings before judges.
9. Most Humorous Book: The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, by Mark Edward Herrmann
The book fits itself into just 135 pages and the author is a veteran lawyer who sheds light on a single day in the life of a lawyer. The book describes the daily life of a private attorney, including building strategies, billing paperwork, dressing for success, and maintaining office relationships.
10. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman
This book explains what should be behind all of your business decisions before you implement them. You’ll learn the importance of getting everyone on the same page while achieving business success and creating your leadership team.
11. Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
This book has no academic terms, wording, or jargon. Instead, the authors break down the strategies for high-stakes negotiations into actionable things you can use on a daily basis. The strategies the authors discuss include active listening, tactical empathy, establishing rapport, the illusion of control, setting limits, and more.
12. Never Lose a Customer Again, Joey Coleman
This book explains how important it is to turn your clients into lifelong clients. It proves that a client’s emotions don’t end when the case is closed. The author discusses the eight phases a client goes through in the 100 days following the purchase of a product or service.
13. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen
The book works as the ultimate guide to business productivity. It explains why productivity closely correlates with the ability to relax. You’ll learn how to use the “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule to assess your business goals and stay focused.
14. Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be, Carolyn Elefant
This book is for the lawyers who want to start their own practice but have concerns. It uncovers the best practices and stories of other lawyers who have already found success in their own legal practices.
15. The Marble and the Sculptor: From Law School to Law Practice, Keith Lee
The book is a walkthrough for newly graduated students on what to do next, how to make the transition from law school to legal practice, develop successful relationships with customers, and much more.
16. Law Is a Buyer’s Market: Building A Client-First Law Firm, Jordan Furlong
The book covers how lawyers can respond to an increasingly competitive landscape with cost-effective solutions. The author explains how to make a law firm succeed when adapting to new challenges in the buyer’s market and what to do when the clients change their purchasing behavior.
17. First Things First, Stephen Covey and Roger Merrill
In this book, the author proposes prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance so that lawyers can focus only on what matters the most. The book serves as a compass to find your way across your daily routine, manage “to-do” lists, and set the right direction for your future career and goals.
18. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen Covey
The book is a business bestseller of the 20th century. This book has captured the attention of lawyers for more than 25 years. It gives insights into productivity, law firm time management, and positive thinking while living a life full of great purpose and staying organized on the go.
19. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, Spencer Johnson
This book leads you through some simple ways to take the fear and anxiety out of your future while maintaining a work-life balance. It explains why people fear changes and how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept them.
Best books for lawyers on business
20. Letting Go of Your Bananas, Daniel Drubin
The book explains the common mistakes and risks behind taking on too much and highlights that sometimes less is more. The author proposes a quick 12-step approach to leave all the expendable “bananas” of your life out while concentrating on the value of life itself.
21. Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries
The book shows how to stand out, build a successful business, and take your place in the legal market. The author explains how to combine science and technology to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, reduce distraction, and satisfy client demands.
22. How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie
As one of the timeless best of the bestsellers, the book helps you build multi-level relationships with clients, partners, and others in the legal industry. The author’s commonsense approach to communication is life-changing and works across industries.
23. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t, Jim Collins
The book reveals what makes legal firms fail and what it takes to break through the legal market. The author has been conducting research on companies with outstanding results for at least 15 years, outlining the key findings for those who want to build their own legal firms.
24. How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday, Garry Spence
The book teaches you how to make a winning argument, provide the best evidence, and build the best case. It is about receiving the expected results after establishing effective methods of communication.
25. One Hundred Days Before Trial: A Family Lawyer’s Guide to Preparation and Strategy, Steven Nathan Peskind
Learn all the ins and outs of trial preparation with an alternative to the mad-dash scramble method, accurate timing and planning, and self-discipline. The book is broken into schedules upon arbitrary time periods with each case having different dynamics.
How to get the most of your legal workflows
The right legal books for lawyers can sometimes deliver even more value than an expensive law degree or legal training. Apart from gaining new skills, researching the market, and developing strong relationships with clients, good lawyers need to prioritize tasks and eliminate paper routines. And that’s only possible when you have everything you need at hand or you know exactly where to find it. Luckily, airSlate is here to help with both of these.
With airSlate, lawyers automate their legal workflows in minutes, reduce paperwork and errors, and store documents in other systems.
Being an airSlate user also means you can access more than 85,000 state-specific forms in one of the most robust online digital libraries — US Legal Forms.
What can airSlate users do with US Legal Forms?
- Access state-specific legal and business forms and form packages. Whether you’re going through something personal, starting a business, selling property, renting out a property, managing a trust, preparing a will, handling domestic affairs, etc., US Legal Forms has what you need.
- Take advantage of advanced completion services. Fill out a short questionnaire and answer a few simple questions to receive your personalized document: Last Will, Power of Attorney or Living Will / Health Care Directive.
- Benefit from pages of legal terms, definitions, articles, guides, FAQs, handbooks, and so much more. While browsing the US Legal Forms website, you can benefit from an array of useful resources for free!
