Legal Systems & Skills provides students with a practical guide to all the essential knowledge and skills they will need for their law degree and beyond. Divided into three core areas, it forms a foundation for legal studies and for graduate employment.

Essential Legal Systems: Part I delivers a focused and practical guide to the purpose and application of law. Contemporary and holistic in approach, it covers all the essential topics in legal systems, considering social, moral, ethical, and jurisprudential perspectives. Taking learning further, it helps students to critically evaluate legal systems and their implications for individuals, businesses, and commerce.

Essential Legal Skills: Part II demonstrates step-by-step approaches to acquiring and honing the skills needed for the academic study of law and professional practice. Numerous visual aids and learning features help students to become adept researchers, nimble problem-solvers, dexterous writers, and competent communicators. They will acquire the tools they need to analyse, evaluate, and apply the law, and to thrive in their future careers.

Essential Employability and Commercial Awareness: Part III helps students to see how their knowledge and skills can be practically applied, in the legal world or outside of it. Students are encouraged to reflect on and actively improve their commercial awareness through case studies, and activities, aimed at helping them to develop the skills they will need to thrive in the world of work. Targeted coverage of employability, CV development, and transferrable skills helps students to approach their future careers with confidence and communicate their own competencies effectively.

This book is the essential contemporary toolkit for savvy law students, enabling them to:

Learn how law works;
Develop the essential skills; and
Apply them to succeed.

This text is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre offering students the following stimulating resources:
- Self-test questions
- A library of web links that direct students to useful websites and relevant media
- The authors' guidance to answering the thought-provoking questions in the book
- Additional content providing guidance on effective teamwork, meetings and presentations
- Regular updates in the law
- Sample interview questions to help students identify which areas of commercial awareness they need to focus on

About the Author:
Scott Slorach, Director of Learning & Teaching, York Law School, University of York, Judith Embley, Associate Professor, University of Law, Peter Goodchild, Associate Professor, University of Law, Catherine Shephard, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University

Scott Slorach is a Professor and Director of Teaching & Learning at York Law School at the University of York. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde and a Visiting Fellow of the College of Law Australia. He has over twenty-five years' experience in the design and delivery of undergraduate, postgraduate and professional legal education programmes. A qualified solicitor with City experience, he was author of Corporate Finance (OUP) and is currently co-author of Business Law (OUP).

Judith Embley is Associate Professor at the University of Law. She qualified as a solicitor in 1980, practising in a Lincoln's Inn firm and began teaching law in 1999 as a Visiting Lecturer at Bellerby's College and then Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She joined the University of Law in 2001, where she has taught contract, commercial and business financial law. She is now Module Lead for the LPC Commercial Law and Practice module and the LLB Transactions module. She is joint author of Commercial and Intellectual Property Law and Practice and Legal Foundations, two of the University of Law's Legal Practice Guides.

Peter Goodchild is an Associate Professor at the University of Law. He read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at St. Anne's College, Oxford, then attended the University of Law and qualified as a solicitor in 1997, into commercial practice. He joined the University of Law in 2000, where he has taught the English legal system, contract, tort, ethics, commercial, IP and business structures law. In addition to over fifteen years of teaching experience, he has wide experience of designing programmes and has been an author of texts on tort, commercial law, IP law and the English legal system.

Catherine Shephard is Senior Lecturer and Subject Leader of corporate practice, company law in a global context, practical legal research and professional skills in practice at Manchester Law School. She read law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, practised as a solicitor in corporate finance and has significant experience of designing, delivering and assessing a wide range of skills, law and management programmes to solicitors in practice and to students at Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Law. Catherine is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and External Examiner at Northumbria Law School.