Week 05-W

Prereading Stuff to do to get us going.

Titles They tell us stuff.

  1. Politics, OJ Simpson, and the Rise of the Angry Blond White Woman
  2. Defense Attorneys--We Sleep Very Well at Night, Thank You Very Much
  3. Clients--Thirty-Nine Floors Is a Long Way to Fall
  4. Prosecutors--Being a Prosecutor Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
  5. Judges--At Least Get It Wrong for Both Sides
  6. Police Officers--to Preserve, Protect, and to Lie
  7. Jurors--Nobody Knows Anything
  8. Media--Shame on You for Believing What We Say
  9. The Best System in the World???

What can you predict about your chapters based on the titles?

Structure Good writers teach us how to read their work.

For each of your chapters, make a (broad) outline of the chapter by looking at the headings in the chapter.

If you can, skim over each section and try to predict what Geragos and Harris might be saying in that section. (It's okay if you're not sure.)

Topic Sentences They're mostly pretend, but they're sometimes still useful.

The following is from Mark Geragos's Introduction to Mistrial, which we read last week.

[…] The decision to become a criminal defense attorney rather than a prosecutor or corporate lawyer was an easy one for me because I am Armenian. Armenia is a small country strategically located between Europe and Asia. The total population of the country is approximately 3 million people. During my life, I have on countless occasions had to explain to people that Armenians are not Iranians, are not Albanians, are not from a country in South America, don't speak Persian, aren't fire worshipers, and, most especially, that their capital city is not Glendale, California. All four of my grandparents were Armenian and survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Like all children of Armenian ancestry, upon learning the stories of the genocide, I felt a heavy burden to someday grow up and do whatever I could for Armenia and to honor my grandparents and great-grandparents. With that heritage, there was no way I was going to be anything but a defense attorney.[…]

Topic Sentences They're mostly pretend, but they're sometimes still useful.

Choose one section from each of your chapters. This can be the most interesting, the most surprising, or the most difficult to predict so far.

Go through that section and read the first sentence of every paragraph. When you get to the end of the section, write a brief (guesswork) summary of the section, based on those first lines.

Asking Guiding Questions Reading with a purpose.

Within your groups, discuss each of your chapters and come up with a few questions you have that the chapter might answer. Think of these questions as things you're not sure about after skimming the chapter, but that you think you might find out reading more closely.

These questions can help guide you later on, as you're reading the chapters more fully.

Note: this should definitely be in your group notes, which I'll be collecting. I'm looking for 2-3 questions per chapter, but from the whole group.

Best Guess Summary

Finally, for each of your chapters, write in one sentence your best guess about what the chapter will say. Write it as if you were summarizing the chapter.

Note: this should definitely be in your group notes, which I'll be collecting. Again, one best-guess summary per chapter from each group.