Legal English

We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice. But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens. Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise.

An influential shipping firm, Goldwaters, pays Eric Ward a large retainer to work for them, much to his surprise. Then one of the Goldwaters fleet, the Sierra Nova, is “arrested” and is unable to leave port. The reason? A crew member, Edwards, has been caught in possession of drugs and is accused of smuggling—but now he’s been removed from the ship, why can’t the voyage go ahead? Then Edwards is murdered on his way to the courtroom. Ward soon finds himself sinking into the dangerous world of international conspiracy and modern-day piracy.

Danny Cartwright and Spencer Craig never should have met. One evening, Danny, an East End cockney who works as a garage mechanic, takes his fianceé up to the West End to celebrate their engagement. He crosses the path of Spencer Craig, a West End barrister posed to be the youngest Queen's Counsel of his generation. A few hours later Danny is arrested for murder and later is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, thanks to irrefutable testimony from Spencer, the prosecution's main witness.

Constitutional fundamentalists read the Constitution selectively and self-servingly. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Constitution elevate certain constitutional rights above all others, benefit the most powerful members of society, and undermine the integrity of the document as a whole. The conservative fetish for the Second Amendment (enforced by groups such as the NRA) provides an obvious example of constitutional fundamentalism; the liberal fetish for the First Amendment (enforced by groups such as the ACLU) is less obvious but no less influential.

Hollywood actor Robert Soloman stands accused of stabbing his wife and her lover, but he is pleading that he had nothing to do with it. This is the trial of the century, and the defence want Eddie Flynn on their team. The biggest case Eddie has ever tried before, he decides to take it on despite the overwhelming evidence that Robert is guilty. As the trial starts, Eddie becomes sure of Robert's innocence, but there's something else he is even more sure of - that there is something sinister going on in the jury box.

Harper must deal with a dark part of her past when she defends her rapist, Michael Reynolds, who is charged with murdering a judge. Harper wants revenge, so she takes the case with the explicit desire to throw it. But as she digs deeper into the case, she understands that if she throws Michael's case, it means that the real culprit will go free. Struggling with her conscience, which is fighting for her desire for vengeance, Harper must access some of the darkest recesses of her brain.

In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues. There were no witnesses, no one with a motive. But the police soon came to suspect Quincy Miller, a young Black man who was once a client of Russo’s.

For a young lawyer on the make, it was an offer Mitch McDeere couldn’t refuse: a position at a law firm where the bucks, billable hours, and benefits are over the top. It’s a dream job for an up-and-comer—if he can overlook the uneasy feeling he gets at the office. Then an FBI investigation into the firm’s connections to the Mafia plunges the straight and narrow attorney into a nightmare of terror and intrigue. With no choice but to pit his wits, ethics, and legal skills against the firm’s deadly secrets—if he hopes to stay alive…

Raised in Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now Tom has been accused of murdering the Black nurse with whom he worked in the 1960s and Penn is determined to exonerate him. The quest for answers leads down a trail of corruption and brutality that places Penn’s family squarely in the crosshairs of the Double Eagles, a vicious offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the state’s most powerful men. Penn ultimately must acknowledge that secrets from his father’s past have put the Cage family in great jeopardy.

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Abused from the age of eight by her older brother and then her step-father, Maureen Wood quickly became numb to the constant suffering. But Maureen’s world crumbled when her own mother started to abuse her too. A Family Secret is the harrowing true story of how one little girl survived sickening abuse by the people who should have loved her most and how an innocent baby finally saved her.

When a powerful politician is arrested for killing a local business owner, he hires Nate on one condition—Nate must try the case within ninety days. He has a rock-solid alibi and wants to prove his innocence before his opponents can destroy his career.

Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.

Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.... Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.

When he goes undercover to bust mobsters who have infiltrated the sports world, Butch Karp glides effortlessly from the criminal courts he dominates as a prosecutor to the basketball court. Police have found the body of a pro basketball star in a car on the edge of the city, the glove compartment stuffed with cocaine. The investigation leads to a sophisticated ring of sports fixing and drug trafficking, and Karp's own background as a college basketball standout helps him close in on the crooks.

Back as head of the district attorney's homicide bureau, Butch Karp comes up against one of his most bizarre cases yet. A series of racially motivated murders in Harlem prove to be the work of a wealthys uburbanite out to relive a twisted episode from his childhood. The killer's showboating defense attorney will stop at nothing to derail Karp's prosecution - even if it means igniting a race war.

What do you get when you mix beautiful people, family secrets, and a yacht washed up on Sunset Key with a hundred grand in cash and a dying man? Steve Solomon sees a case that can get Solomon & Lord off the ground. But Victoria Lord spies a golden opportunity to go out on her own.

Despite what major media sources say, violence against Native women is not an epidemic. An epidemic is biological and blameless. Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer's work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on - and ending it. The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse.

Corporate lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under a lot of pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on the most high-stakes case in company history defending a prominent bank. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone - and the secret documents that were on it - she needs help. Badly. Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when governments, corporations, and plutocrats need their problems solved discretely. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved....