Fruehwald, Edwin S., Critical Thinking: An Essential Skill for Law Students, Lawyers, Law Professors, and Judges (July 16, 2022). Kindle Direct Publishing 2022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4164754

“Critical thinking is essential for law students, lawyers, law professors, and judges. Yet law schools have never systematically taught critical thinking to their students. The main purpose of this book is to help law students, lawyers, law professors, and judges become critical thinkers. Chapter One introduces the reader to the need for critical thinking in the law, and it will give two methods of evaluating how critical thinking works within legal education. Chapter Two helps the reader understand the basics of critical thinking. Most scholars think that critical thinking is domain specific, so Chapter Three presents the domain of the law. Chapter Four introduces an important facet of critical thinking–self-regulated (self-directed) learning. Chapter Five applies critical thinking basics to law’s domain, and it presents the details of critical thinking in the law. Chapter Six demonstrates how critical thinking can produce better legal writers. Chapter Seven focuses on judges and critical thinking. Chapter Eight shows how critical thinking can make you a better law professor. Chapter Nine shows how critical thinking processes can improve the use of the Socratic method in legal education. The final chapter brings everything together and highlights the most important aspects of critical thinking for law students, lawyers, law professors, and judges. Two appendices contain sample Socratic dialogues that employ critical thinking. I have included exercises and problems on critical thinking throughout the book.”