Legal English

New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history - and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul's client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the lightbulb and holds the right to power the country?

The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial, set in a courthouse more Soviet than Le Corbusier; a rich, white teenage girl - a twin - on trial for murdering her toddler brother. Two of the jurors: Hannah, a married 52-year-old former Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine photographer of rock stars and socialites, and Graham, a 41-year-old anatomy professor. Both are sequestered along with the other jurors at the Econo Lodge off I-75. Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath as jurors never to discuss the trial.

There was a time when Jake Becker had it all together. He was controlled, driven, ruthless - in and out of the courtroom. Then, six irresistible orphans and their heartbreakingly beautiful aunt crashed into his perfectly ordered life. They changed everything. They changed him. Now he's a husband, an upstanding member of society, a father figure - a family man.

The murder of a woman from one of the town's oldest families has Rosedale's upper crust howling for blood, and the prosecutor is counting on Ruby's inexperience to help him deliver a swift conviction. Ruby's client is a college football star who has returned home after a career-ending injury, and she is determined to build a defense that will stick. She finds help in unexpected quarters from Suzanne, a hard-charging attorney armed to the teeth, and Shorty, a diner cook who knows more than he lets on.

Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he sent 16 men to death row, and watched seven of them die. But now, in the aftermath of his wife's death, the grief-stricken father packs up his four-year-old daughter, Annie, and returns to his hometown in search of healing. But peace is not what he finds there.

No one mourned when San Francisco DA Wes Farrell put Paul Riley in prison eleven years ago for the rape and murder of his girlfriend. And no one is particularly happy to see him again when he’s released after The Exoneration Initiative uncovered evidence that pinned the crime on someone else. In fact, Riley soon turns up murdered, surrounded by the loot from his latest scam. But if Riley was really innocent all along, who wanted him dead?

A young exotic dancer claims she was sexually assaulted at a party thrown by a university football team. Three players are accused. In the ninth installment of the best-selling Joe Dillard series, Dillard finds himself defending one of the players accused of assaulting the young woman. The case receives national attention, quickly escalating into a platform for deep-seeded division and hatred. It also ensnares Dillard, along with his son, Jack, and Charleston Story into a web of lies and deceit spun by a mysterious figure with a hidden agenda.

Tony Colletti, a good suburban cop and father of a child with autism, finds himself drawn into the controversy over the apparent but rarely acknowledged connection between childhood vaccines and autism. His quest to uncover the truth forces him to risk all he holds dear while confronting corrupt government officials, the powerful pharmaceutical industry, and disturbing elements of his own past. Even while holding down his job and dealing with family crises, Colletti spearheads the drive to contend with industrial espionage, Russian gangsters, and sexual predators.

In these witty and comic stories, Horace Rumpole takes on a variety of clients and activities. He, of course, brings each case to a successful end, all the while quoting poetry and drinking claret.

Fight promoter Zack Grayson is on the prowl for a rising star. As the top recruiter of a prestigious MMA promotion company, he wants to take someone where he will never be able to go again: the top of the professional league. He didn't expect that someone to be the woman he loved and left. Top-ranked MMA amateur fighter Shayla "Shilla the Killa" Tanner built walls around her heart when Zack left her. Now, seeing Zack is nearly enough to send those walls crumbling. As Shayla and Zack grow closer, business turns personal. And once their passion unleashes, there's no going back.

When a brilliant billionaire is diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, he realizes that all his considerable wealth cannot prepare him to meet his Maker. But he has an idea that might: he will stage the ultimate reality show. With his true agenda hidden, he auditions followers from all the world's major religions, inviting them to the trial of their lives on a remote island, where they must defend their beliefs against spiritual challenges. Oliver Finney, a feisty old judge with his own secrets, is chosen to defend Christianity. As the program takes a strange twist, he realizes he is trapped in a game of deadly agendas that may cost him his life.

Bennie Rosato, the founder of the Rosato & DiNunzio law firm, hides her big heart beneath her tough-as-nails exterior, and she doesn't like to fail. Now a case from her past shows her how differently things might have turned out. Thirteen years ago, Bennie Rosato took on Jason Leftavick, a 12-year-old boy who was sent to a juvenile detention center after fighting a class bully. Bennie couldn't free Jason, and to this day it's the case that haunts her.

When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral—a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found.

Every week a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through customs and loads them into armored trucks.

After scheming his way to power in House of Cards, Francis Urquhart made a triumphant return in To Play the King - a Sunday Times number one best-seller that became a BBC TV series, with Ian Richardson resuming his award-winning role as Francis Urquhart, and a hugely successful Netflix series.

Scott Turow has written a supercharged, exquisitely suspenseful novel about a vicious triple murder and the man condemned to die for it. No other writer offers such a profound understanding of what is at stake when the state holds the power to end a man's life.

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.

Charlie and Oliver Caruso are brothers who work at Greene & Greene, a private bank so exclusive you need two million dollars just to be a client. But when the door of success slams in their faces, they're faced with an offer they can't refuse: three million dollars in an abandoned account. No one knows it exists, and even better, it doesn't belong to anyone.

Widower Jack Harris has resisted the dating scene ever since the shooting of his wife Molly by a fifteen-year-old boy three years ago. An early morning run along the Hudson River changes that when he spots a woman in last night’s party dress, barefoot, enjoying a champagne picnic alone, reading his favorite novel. Everything about her reminds him of what he used to have with Molly. Eager to help Jack find love again, his best friend posts a message on a popular website after he mentions the encounter.

Don't Panic will prepare you for legal issues you'll encounter as a creator or entrepreneur. Whether you are a start-up, a filmmaker, a musician, an author, or another creator, this book will help you understand what you need to know and how to avoid getting sued. The book covers a range of legal situations that may arise, from the inception of your business or the creation of your work to that dreaded moment (that hopefully doesn't happen) you get a nasty lawyer letter for the first time.