LEGAL-EASE: Fresh Insights Into Lawyering is unlike any book for or about lawyers that you have ever read.

The basic premise of Legal-Ease is that what lawyers actually do for a living consists of various functions – thinking, communicating, dealing with people, making decisions – that have recognizable counterparts in life generally.

James C. Freund, New York lawyer and author, has projected that premise into a number of real-life situations, designed to show that thinking like a lawyer helps an attorney grasp what's out there in the world beyond his practice, and that what happens outside has considerable relevance to lawyering.

Legal-ease is organized in terms of five overall themes: the way lawyers' minds work – or sometimes, refuse to work – with the empahsis on opening up thought processes that may have become too fossilized over the years; certain intangible skills by which good lawyers wend their way through chaotic surroundings in search of excellence; communicating, including avoiding misunderstandings and making points with clarity and emphasis; dealing with people – their perceptions, their unvoiced expectations, their conflicts and dilemmas; and matters of judgment.

Along the way, Mr. Freund has sprinked a short story, a play, a summation in verse, a caricature of the typical lawyer – and a guide to what's worth snatching from the bathrooms of first-class hotels.

Out of print. Available at Amazon.com.