Field, Kaplan, Clermont, and Clopton's Materials for a Basic Course in Civil Procedure, Concise, 14th

This casebook is the concise, and very modern, version of a respected classic of civil procedure casebooks. The key to its brevity is its efficient and systematic step-by-step survey of the subject in Part One, which provides a tight 270-page comprehensive treatment of current civil procedure. The survey suffices to give the students a complete and solid grounding in civil procedure by means of the cases, commentaries, text, and questions that progress from pretrial and settlement to trial, judgment, appeal, jurisdiction, and complex litigation. This brief yet thorough coverage leaves time for in-depth treatment of a few selected problem areas regarding the system’s fundamental structure in Part Two on governing law, Part Three on authority to adjudicate, and Part Four on res judicata. The fourteenth edition has been thoroughly updated. It newly features most prominently a reordering of Part Three and a reworking of the rapidly changing subject of general and specific personal jurisdiction. Also, to meet an accelerating need, it introduces new materials on arbitration. Finally, it brings a proven “Stories” approach to the presentation of the major cases’ backgrounds.