How to Think Like a Lawyer Expert

Reviewed
Three Parts: Spotting Issues Using Logic Questioning Everything

Law professors and practicing attorneys cant talk about thinking like a lawyer without bringing up the 1973 film The Paper
Chase.[1] In the film, Professor Kingsfield tells his first-year law students: You come in here with a head full of mush and you
leave thinking like a lawyer. Although law professors remain fond of telling students theyre going to teach them how to think
like a lawyer, you dont have to attend law school to enhance your own logic and critical thinking skills.

Part
Spotting Issues
1

1 Approach a problem from all angles. To see all the possible issues in a set of facts, lawyers look at the
situation from different perspectives. Putting yourself in others shoes allows you to understand other
points of view.
On law school exams, students learn to structure their answers using the acronym IRAC, which stands
for Issue, Rule, Analysis and Conclusion. Failure to spot all possible issues can derail the entire answer.
[2]

For example, suppose youre walking down a street and notice a ladder leaned against a building. A
worker on the top rung is reaching far to his left, cleaning a window. There are no other workers present,
and the bottom of the ladder juts out onto the sidewalk where people are walking. Issue spotting
involves not only looking at this situation from the viewpoint of the worker and the person walking on the
street, but also the building owner, the workers employer, and potentially even the city where the
building is located.

2 Avoid emotional entanglement. Theres a reason you might say you were blinded by anger or another
emotion -- feelings arent rational and keep you from seeing facts that may be important to solving a
problem.
Accurately spotting the issues is important to determine which facts are relevant and important.
Emotions and sentiment can cause you to become attached to details that bear little to no importance to
the outcome of the situation.
Thinking like a lawyer requires putting aside personal interests or emotional reactions to focus on real,
provable facts. For example, suppose a criminal defendant stands charged with molesting a small child.
Police arrested him near a playground, and immediately began asking him why he was there and his
intentions regarding the children playing nearby. The distraught man confessed he planned to harm the
children. The details of the case may be revolting, but the defense attorney will set aside the emotional
trauma and focus on the fact that the defendant was not informed of his right to remain silent before he
was questioned.[3]

3 Argue both sides. Non-lawyers may perceive this ability as a moral failing in lawyers, but it doesnt mean
lawyers dont believe in anything. The ability to argue both sides of an issue means you understand that
there are two sides to every story, each of which has potentially valid points.
When you learn how to make opposing arguments, you also learn how to hear them, which increases
tolerance and allows more problems to be solved cooperatively.[4]
Part
Using Logic
2

1 Deduce particular conclusions from general rules. Deductive reasoning is one of the hallmarks of
thinking like a lawyer. In law, this pattern of logic is used when applying a rule of law to a particular fact
pattern.

2 Construct syllogisms. A syllogism is a particular type of deductive reasoning often used in legal
reasoning, and asserts that what is true for a general group will also be true for all specific individuals in
that same group.[5]
Syllogisms consist of three parts: a general statement, a particular statement, and a conclusion about
the particular based on the general.
The general statement typically is broad and nearly universally applicable. For example, you might say
All dirty floors show negligence.
The particular statement refers to a specific person or set of facts, such as This restaurant's floor is
dirty.
The conclusion relates the particular back to the general. Having stated a universal rule, and having
established that your particular person is a part of the group covered by the universal rule, you can now
arrive at your conclusion: This restaurant floor shows negligence.

3 Infer general rules from patterns of specifics. Sometimes you dont have a general rule, but you can
see several similar situations in which the same thing happened. Inductive reasoning allows you to
conclude that if the same thing happens enough times, you can draw a general rule that it will always happen.
Inductive reasoning doesnt enable you to make any guarantees that your conclusion is true. However, if
something happens regularly, its probable enough for you to rely on when creating a rule.
For example, suppose no ones told you that, as a general rule, a dirty floor shows negligence on the
part of a shop employee or shop owner. However, you observe a pattern in several cases where a
customer slipped and fell and the judge ruled the owner was negligent. Because of his negligence, the
owner had to pay for the customer's injuries. Based on your knowledge of these cases, you conclude
that if a shop floor is dirty, the shop owner is negligent.
Only knowing a few examples may not be sufficient to create a rule you can rely on to any great extent.
The larger the proportion of individual cases in a group that share the same trait, the more likely the
conclusion is to be true.[6]

4 Compare similar situations using analogies. When lawyers argue a case by comparing it to an earlier
case, theyre using an analogy.
Lawyers try to win a new case by demonstrating that its facts are substantially similar to the facts in an
old case, and thus the new case should be decided the same way as the old case was.
Law professors teach law students to reason by analogy by proposing hypothetical sets of facts for them
to analyze. Students read a case and then apply that cases rules to those different scenarios.
Comparing and contrasting facts also helps you determine which facts are important to the outcome of
the case, and which are irrelevant or trivial.[7]
For example, suppose a girl in a red dress is walking through a store when she slips and falls on a
banana peel. The girl sues the store for her injuries and wins because the judge rules the store owner
was negligent in not sweeping the floor. Thinking like a lawyer means identifying which of the facts were
important to the judge in deciding the case.
In the next town over, a girl in a blue dress is walking to her table at a caf when she slips and falls on a
muffin wrapper. If youre thinking like a lawyer, youve probably concluded that this case has the same
outcome as the previous one. The girls location, the color of her dress, and what she tripped on are all
irrelevant details. The important, and analogous, facts are an injury that occurred because a store owner
was negligent in his or her duty to keep the floors clean.
 Part
Questioning Everything
3

1 Break down assumptions. Like emotions, assumptions create blind spots in your thinking. Lawyers seek
evidence to prove every factual statement, and assume nothing is true without proof.

2 Ask why. You may have had experience with a young child who asked why? after everything you said.
Although that can get annoying, its also part of thinking like a lawyer.
Lawyers refer to why a law was made as its policy. The policy behind a law can be used to argue that
new facts or circumstances should also fall under the law.
For example, suppose that in 1935, the city council enacted a law prohibiting vehicles in the public park.
The law was enacted primarily for safety concerns, after a small child was hit by a car. In 2014, the city
council was asked to consider whether the 1935 statute prohibited drones. Are drones vehicles? Would
prohibiting drones advance the laws policy? Why? If youre asking those questions (and recognizing
arguments that can be made on both sides), youre thinking like a lawyer.
Thinking like a lawyer also means not taking anything for granted. Understanding why something
happened, or why a certain law was enacted, enables you to apply the same rationale to other fact
patterns and reach a logical conclusion.

3 Accept ambiguity. Legal issues are seldom black and white. Life is too complex for legislators to account
for every possibility when they write a law.
Ambiguities allow for flexibility, so laws dont have to be rewritten every time a new scenario comes
along. For example, the Constitution has been interpreted to relate to electronic surveillance, a
technological advance the Framers couldnt have imagined.
Much of thinking like a lawyer involves being comfortable with nuances and gray areas. However, just
because those gray areas exist doesnt mean distinctions are meaningless.[8]

Community Q&A

When is it time to call a lawyer?

You should call a lawyer soon as you're being charged for anything or need assistance in legal issues.
wikiHow Contributor
Not Helpful 0 Helpful 14

Why do lawyers have to defend people?

Lawyers usually defend cases because they know the law well and can help the person get the most fair trial
wikiHow Contributor under the law.
Not Helpful 0 Helpful 11

Warnings

Thinking like a lawyer also requires using judgment. Just because a logical argument can be made doesnt mean
that argument is good. Judgment is necessary to determine whether a given line of reasoning or conclusion is in
anyones best interests or advances society as a whole, or if its destructive and dangerous. [9]
Thinking like a lawyer can be helpful in many different contexts. However, cold, rational critical thinking is seldom
appropriate when dealing with personal relationships or in purely social settings.[10]
Sources and Citations

1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070509/
2. http://www.alwd.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pdf/Rapoport.pdf
3. http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/08/24/thinking-like-a-lawyer/

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