If you’re an attorney in California, we’d like to find out more about how you use legal publications in your practice.  We have developed a very short survey that will help us figure out what we can do to make the books we write as useful as possible to you.  In addition to our appreciation, if you complete the survey you’ll get either a free federal pretrial deadlines calculator or 10% off your next purchase from Jones McClure.

With this week’s release of the 2008 edition of O’Connor’s Texas Causes of Action Pleadings, I was reminded of an excellent note written by Kevin Collins in the Spring 2005 edition of the Review of Litigation.  In the note, titled “The Use of Plain-Language Principles in Texas Litigation Formbooks,” Mr. Collins analyzes the plain-language movement and evaluates four popular Texas forms books, including O’Connor’s Texas Civil Forms, based on a model he created (i.e., the Plain English and Exoteric Readability (PEER) review) to test publishers’ “plain-language” claims.  Rating O’Connor’s the best, here’s what he had to say:

The survey results, evaluation of Texas formbooks, and interview [with Professor William Dorsaneo] suggest that there is a slow shift toward litigators’ writing more plainly. Survey respondents stated that they relied on formbooks. Three of the four Texas formbooks market their material as plain-language products. At least one of those formbooks—O’Connor’s—actually does avoid unnecessary legalese.

For over 15 years, we’ve been leading the charge to bring clarity to legal writing, not only in our forms products, but in our codes and commentaries products as well.  If you haven’t used one of our forms products, I would encourage you to try them out.  I think you’ll find them much easier to use and understand. 

The 2008 edition of O’Connor’s Texas Causes of Action Pleadings (COAP) is out!  If you’re unfamiliar with the title, the COAP includes detailed, comprehensive pleadings for the causes of action in its companion book, O’Connor’s Texas Causes of Action.  This year’s edition has been updated with 2007 legislation and case law, and includes new forms for actions under the Texas Debt Collection Act.  I know that you’ll find it to be one of the best forms resources for prosecuting and defending Texas causes of action.

More and more these days, it seems that lawyers and law librarians from around the country who are familiar with O’Connor’s Federal Rules * Civil Trials (or our Texas products if they happen to be down here with local counsel) are eager for us to start publishing books for their state. So I’m pleased to announce that we’re expanding our product line to include the great state of California, home to over 210,000 attorneys, nearly three-quarters of whom are on active status.

Given the requests we’ve received from California lawyers and law librarians, the only difficult decision we had to make was whether we would start with a civil procedure manual or a causes of action manual. Either way, our reasons for producing a California title were essentially the same as our reasons for creating law books in the first place—namely, law students and attorneys (both young and old) need a practical, well-written, and affordable guide to state civil practice. In the end, we decided a civil procedure manual covering California pretrial practice should be first.

Years ago I came across the following comments published by a former Berkeley law professor here, and in many ways his observations capture the reasons we chose to create a civil procedure manual:

California lawyers are already blessed with multi-volume works on California civil procedure. The Rutter Group, now affiliated with the West Group, has published: Civil Procedure Before Trial, by Robert I. Weil and Ira A. Brown, Civil Trials and Evidence, by William E. Wegner, Robert H. Fairbank, Norman L. Epstein, and Eli Chernow, Civil Appeals and Writs, by Jon B. Eisenberg, Ellis J. Horvitz, and Howard B. Wiener, and Enforcing Judgments and Debts, by Alan M. Ahart. Bancroft-Whitney Co. (also affiliated with West Group) has published the encyclopedic California Procedure, by Bernard E. Witkin. Why another work covering the same ground?

Legal texts have become bloated and unaffordable. The four Rutter Group series named above comprise ten volumes, take up roughly 36 inches of shelf space (fortunately, CDROM versions are available), and cost a total of $800. (These are 1996 prices.) Annual updates cost a total of $328.50. …

*****

California Procedure suffers from similar shortcomings. The third edition comprises ten volumes, consuming roughly 19 inches of shelf space at a total cost of $995.00. (A CDROM version of the entire Witkin library costs $2,500.) Annual updates cost $249.50. Bancroft-Whitney used a somewhat larger page size, but the author apparently could not bear to cut obsolete material. Consequently, one must plow through extended discussion of repealed statutes and overruled cases. …

Because of the expense and space requirements, the purchase and storage of these books imposes a substantial burden on the customer. Law firms cannot afford to buy each litigator a personal set. Instead, a firm will buy a single set and place it in the firm library. This means that a lawyer who has a question about California civil procedure must walk to the library and locate the needed volume. More often than not, some lunkhead has taken that volume back to his office without leaving a note.

Another factor in our decision has been the Committee of Bar Examiners’ vacillating on whether to test for state civil procedure on the bar exam. In 2002, the Committee finally decided to cover California civil procedure and evidence on the bar exam, with the change taking effect last year. The Committee’s decision was important in our analysis for one simple reason:  students need the best possible resources to help them learn and understand state civil procedure.

To put this in perspective, there are 69 law schools in California—20 accredited by the American Bar Association, 18 accredited by the California Committee of Bar Examiners, 17 unaccredited, and 14 correspondence law schools—and students from most of these schools can sit for the California Bar Exam. Unfortunately, only a handful of schools teach California civil procedure as a dedicated course; many simply include state procedure in the students’ first-year federal civil procedure course. This seems especially unwise given that the bar exam is structured to test on the differences between the two systems. Learning one procedural system is difficult enough, much less two at a time. Check out Professor Bill Slomanson’s (Thomas Jefferson School of Law) comments on the subject here. To us, this situation represents an unfulfilled need—multivolume treatises, while authoritative, don’t necessarily help a law student learn state procedure.

So a year ago, we finally put our pens to paper (fingers to keys, actually) and started working on O’Connor’s California Civil Pretrial Handbook, a 10-chapter commentary book covering everything from pleading and motion practice to disposing of the case before trial. Here’s a peek at the table of contents:

Chapter 1:  Introduction
Chapter 2:  Attorneys & Judges
Chapter 3:  The Plaintiff’s Lawsuit
Chapter 4:  The Defendant’s Response
Chapter 5:  Subpoenas
Chapter 6:  Alternative Dispute Resolution
Chapter 7:  Pretrial Motions
Chapter 8:  Discovery
Chapter 9:  Discovery Motions
Chapter 10:  Disposition Without Trial

We’ve also decided to include an annotated Evidence Code for assistance in the courtroom. The Code has some particularly helpful O’Connor’s features that I think you’ll enjoy. We’re still debating whether to include selected provisions from other codes; I’ll keep you posted here on future developments.

It’s been an exciting and challenging experience so far working with the California procedural system, particularly given the volume of rules dedicated to the subject. In the end, we think you’ll be pleased with the result.

If you have any thoughts about our products or what you’d like to see in the Civil Pretrial Handbook, please feel free to leave a comment.

Back in 1992, we started this little publishing company with a book on Texas civil procedure titled O’Connor’s Texas Rules * Civil Trials. The book was unique because it discussed procedural issues in a way that no other portable legal publication had done before. It was divided into two main sections: one section containing the commentaries, which explain procedural issues from filing a lawsuit through post-trial motions, providing a sort of road map for a case, and another section containing all the rules of procedure for litigating a civil case, annotated with quotations from current cases illustrating how the courts interpret each rule. Written in plain, simple English, the book was primarily designed as a portable trial manual to give attorneys everything they needed to know about Texas procedure while in the courtroom. The book was designed—through its content, structure, and layout—to make finding a rule or commentary topic as fast and easy as possible. As a paperback, the book was priced low enough so an attorney could afford to buy an updated copy every year.

The book was written to accomplish a simple goal: give the small-town attorney a leg up on the big firms to help level the playing field. Turns out, the big firms liked the book, too—there’s something about being able to understand the law the first time you read about it.

Over 15 years and 20 productslater, we’re still at it, trying to write the best law books around. We hope, as time goes on, this blog will help you become more acquainted with our company, which is still independent by the way, and our products, both current and planned. And who knows, you might have an idea or two for us.

Oh, and if you ever come across any old advertising that says we work in jeans and polos, drink too much coffee, never, ever bill time, office in a converted downtown warehouse, and publish the best law books for lawyers, it’s still true. Well, except that most summers now we’re in shorts and t-shirts. It’s a lot hotter down here these days.