Take the mumbo jumbo out of contract law and ace your contracts course Contract law deals with the promises and agreements that law will enforce. Understanding contract law is vital for all aspiring lawyers and paralegals, and contracts courses are foundational courses within all law schools. Contract Law For Dummies tracks to a typical contracts course and assists you in understanding the foundational legal rules controlling voluntary agreements people enter into while conducting their personal and business affairs. Suitable as a supplement to introductory and advanced courses in contract law, Contract Law For Dummies gives you plain-English explanations of confusing terminology and aids in the reading and analysis of cases and statutes. Contract Law For Dummies gives you coverage of everything you need to know to score your highest in a typical contracts course. You'll get coverage of contract formation; contract defenses; contract theory and legality; agreement, consideration, restitution, and promissory estoppel; fraud and remedies; performance and breach; electronic contracts and signatures; and much more. Tracks to a typical contracts course Plain-English explanations demystify intimidating information Clear, practical information helps you interpret and understand cases and statutes If you're enrolled in a contracts course or work in a profession that requires you to be up-to-speed on the subject, Contract Law For Dummies has you covered.

Do you know your legal rights and responsibilities if you’re buying or selling a home, applying for a job, or getting a divorce? Are you baffled by the legalese used in contracts, insurance policies, warranties, and other documents? If you want to protect both yourself and your family from the many legal problems that have become commonplace in today’s society, you don’t need a law degree—all you need is a basic understanding of the law. Whether you’re a consumer, employee, or small business owner, Law For Dummies will help you discover your legal rights, responsibilities, and obligations in a wide range of areas. Best of all, this friendly guide will also improve your understanding of how to use laws without resorting to attorneys! You can use this book to answer specific questions about the law as it relates to particular areas of your life or you can use it as a guide to low-cost or no-cost sources of legal advice, including government agencies and nonprofit organizati ons. Law For Dummies is packed with the tools and resources you need to make informed legal decisions. You’ll become familiar with a variety of laws that can affect you personally—from retirement, health care, and housing laws to personal finance, employment, divorce, and privacy laws. You’ll also discover how to: Make sense of the U.S. legal system Resolve legal problems as quickly as possible with a minimum amount of money and stress Correct errors on your credit report Prepare wills and other legal documents Avoid legal hassles when running a business Protect your rights at work Collect child support If you’re like many Americans today, you probably feel overwhelmed by the rules, regulations, and red tape that seem to govern and complicate every aspect f your daily life. With Law For Dummies you can boost your legal know-how and solve a number of everyday legal problems that may come your way.

Apply important legal concepts and skills you need to succeed Get educated, land a job, and start making money now! Want a new career as a paralegal but don't know where to start? Relax! Paralegal Career For Dummies is the practical, hands-on guide to all the basics -- from getting certified to landing a job and getting ahead. Inside, you'll find all the tools you need to succeed, including a CD packed with sample memos, forms, letters, and more! Discover how to * Secure your ideal paralegal position * Pick the right area of the law for you * Prepare documents for litigation * Conduct legal research * Manage a typical law office Sample resumes, letters, forms, legal documents, and links to online legal resources. Please see the CD-ROM appendix for details and complete system requirements.

Does just thinking about the laws of motion make your head spin? Does studying electricity short your circuits? Do the complexities of thermodynamics cool your enthusiasm? Thanks to this book, you don’t have to be Einstein to understand physics. As you read about Newton's Laws, Kepler's Laws, Hooke's Law, Ohm's Law, and others, you’ll appreciate the For Dummies law: The easier we make it, the faster people understand it and the more they enjoy it! Whether you're taking a class, helping kids with homework, or trying to find out how the world works, this book helps you understand basic physics. It covers: Measurements, units, and significant figures Forces such as displacement, speed, and acceleration Vectors and physics notation Motion, energy, and waves (sound, light, wave-particle) Solids, liquids, and gases Thermodynamics Electromagnetism Relativity Atomic and nuclear structures Steven Holzner, Ph.D. earned his B.S. at MIT and his Ph.D. at Cornell, where he taught Physics 101 and 102 for over 10 years. He livens things up with cool physics facts, real-world examples, and simple experiments that will heighten your enthusiasm for physics and science. The book ends with some out-of-this world physics that will set your mind in motion: The possibility of wormholes in space The Big Bang How the gravitational pull of black holes is too strong for even light to escape May the Force be with you!

This book is a valuable resource for information on things to consider before and during the process of buying, selling, closing, and merging a law practice. The guide provides advice and tips on: the advantages of buying and selling a law practice; the ethical aspects of acquiring a law practice; valuation of a law firm; tax consequences of retiring a partner's interest in a law firm taxed as a partnership; merging law firms; selling a niche practice; business responsibilities in closing a law practice; the ethical aspects of winding down a law practice; file preservation; and ending client and employee relationships. The guide includes handy checklists, forms, and sample letters as well as several Rules from the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the political' channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in the priority they give to the rights of individual investors vis- ...-vis the state and (ii) this has repercussions for the development of property rights and financial markets. Second, the adaptability' channel holds that (i) legal traditions differ in their ability to adjust to changing commercial circumstances and (ii) legal systems that adapt quickly to minimize the gap between the contracting needs of the economy and the legal system's capabilities will foster financial development more effectively than would more rigid legal traditions. We use historical comparisons and cross-country regressions to assess the validity of these two channels. We find that legal origin matters for financial development because legal traditions differ in their ability to adapt efficiently to evolving economic conditions.

This guidebook offers plain-English explanations of the pertinent legal topics that small business owners need to understand to maintain a successful e-business. Includes a CD-ROM with checklists, forms, sample letters, and agreements.

"The authors examine how well several institutional and firm-level factors and their interactions explain firms' perceptions of property rights protection. Their sample includes private and public firms that vary in size from very small to large in 62 countries. Together, the institutional theories they investigate account for approximately 70 percent of the country-level variation, indicating that the literature is addressing first-order factors. Firm-level characteristics such as legal organization and ownership structure are comparable to institutional factors in explaining variation in property rights protection. A country's legal origin and formalism index predict property rights variation better than its openness to international trade, its religion, its ethnic diversity, natural endowments or its political system. However, these results are driven by the inclusion of former socialist economies in the sample. When the authors exclude the former socialist economies, legal origin explains considerably less than openness to trade and endowments. Examining a broader set of variables for robustness, they again find that when they exclude former socialist countries, legal origin explains comparatively little of the variation in perceptions of judicial efficiency, corruption, taxes and regulation, street crime, and financing"--Cover verso.

"This book looks not only at 'the law, ' but also at other aspects of the legal system, such as the history, politics, and structure of lawmaking institutions."--Preface, p. [vii].

This innovative volume explores empirical legal issues around the world. While legal studies have traditionally been worked on and of letters and with a normative bent, in recent years quantitative methods have gained traction by offering a brand new perspective of understanding law. That is, legal scholars have started to crunch numbers, not letters, to tease out the effects of law on the regulated industries, citizens, or judges in reality. In this edited book, authors from leading institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia investigate legal issues in South Africa, Argentina, the U.S., Israel, Taiwan, and other countries. Using original data in a variety of statistical tools (from the most basic chi-square analysis to sophisticated two-stage least square regression models), contributors to this book look into the judicial behaviours in Taiwan and Israel, the determinants of constitutional judicial systems in 100 countries, and the effect of appellate court decisions on media competition. In addition, this book breaks new ground in informing important policy debates. Specifically, how long should we incarcerate criminals? Should the medical malpractice liability system be reformed? Do police reduce crime? Why is South Africa’s democratic transition viable? With solid data as evidence, this volume sheds new light on these issues from a road more and more frequently taken—what is known as "empirical legal studies/analysis." This book should be useful to students, practitioners and professors of law, economics and public policy in many countries who seek to understand their legal system from a different, and arguably more scientific, perspective.