This blew me away. As announced by Orin Kerr, the new third edition of LaFave, Israel, King & Kerr’s Criminal Procedure treatise consists of 7 volumes. Yikes! SEVEN! Yes, you read that right. Seven volumes.
And not little thin volumes. No sir. Seven volumes big thick volumes, with most volumes nearly a thousand pages. The index to these seven volumes is 31 pages long. I swear it! The Table of Contents is here. See for yourself!
So who exactly is supposed to read these seven volumes? Not me, baby. Oh no. I don’t have a spare month of my life with nothing doing, not to mention my total absence of interest. It’s not that I’m disinterested in learning more about criminal procedure per se, but I went limp just thinking about reading this treatise.
Any lawyers out there rushing out to buy these 7 volumes? Raise your hands. Not one. Wait, I think I see one. Nope, he was just scratching something.
What about law students, devotees of criminal procedure hoping to land that job with the Legal Aid Society. Are you kids ready to shell out $689.50 to get that third edition on your shelf? You’re gonna need a very thick shelf, you know. No, dad says screw it, become a transactional lawyer. He’s not laying out the money after just buying you that Wii for Christmas. Enough is enough.
So if lawyers aren’t buying, and law students aren’t buying, who is? My guess is that this is going to be one of those sets that gets a place of honor in the law school library. Doesn’t US News rate law schools on the number of volumes in the library, so it pays to make it a seven volume treatise rather than six, and watch that law school rating plummet? I can hear them now at Harvard, going “thank God they used up enough words to make that a set of seven, and keep us from falling to Tier 2, so our students will never get decent criminal law jobs.” Yeah, I’m sure that conversation is happening.
And don’t think that it eluded me that this seven volume set is announced right before Christmas. What to get that lawyer who has nothing but wants everything? Oh yes, she’ll be so thrilled. Order now and we guarantee delivery. Heck, they’ll probably have somebody bring it to your door personally, since you’ll be the only actual living human being ordering.
Seriously, who buys this and why? Were you guys sitting around, having a few emptying a keg of beer and just got out of control? I know you have to realize how ludicrous it is to put out a 7 volume treatise. So tell me, what were you thinking?
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The lawyer who has the 20-volume OED on his bookshelf might think about buying the 7-volume LaFave to accompany it. Man, what a geek he would have to be! . . . . Oh, wait, that’s me.
Well, I do have the eight volume (and growing) Sentencing Guidelines books. So does that make me a geek?
I guess the bigger question is do you just want to borrow mine?
I’d buy it. Sometimes I can’t think of the correct phrase to use on Lexis to look up a case, so I resort to the books.
However, if you want the quick version, I’d rather buy Grimes’ Criminal Law Outline.
Wonderful. I’ve got the three stooges chiming in. And which one of you has the second edition? I thought not. Now go back to your coloring books and don’t you dare draw on the wall.
Three stooges? Wow. Someone’s gotten a little too big for their breeches.
It’s britches. How come you guys are allowed to goof around and I can’t? Come on now, you got to be able to take it like you dish it out.
Actually, I looked it up before I posted. I originally typed britches. They’re both correct. Breeches is an alternate spelling of the word.
Man, you have got to get a sense of humor.
You know, if you had that new seven volume set, you would know how to spell britches/ breeches. But I guess you’re one of those old school lawyers that think they don’t need books. Any books.
Now THERE is a man who knows how to use a 20-volume OED.
YS, I really shouldn’t have to be the one to explain this you, but the book (multiple if you’re a geek like Bennett) you look to for spelling and alternatives is not LaFave on Criminal Procedure. It’s a dictionary. And, if you are old school like me, you don’t actually use a book anymore, but find answers to question on a new thing called a computer.
He googled it, for God’s sake.