Nolo's Encyclopedia of Everyday Law: Answers to Your Most Frequently… (2011)

This is an excellent overview and starting place for most day-to-day legal questions. While it can't go over the specifics of every state or situation, it does cover the major issues that are most likely to come up, especially for public librarians. ( )

This is the first Nolo Press book (of the many I own or have read) to disappoint me. It is so general as to its subject matter and jurisdictions that it cannot address any specific legal matter in a specific place. I liken it to someone undertaking to write a travel guidebook to the entire world. The subject-matter is simply too large to say anything that is meaningful and true for every reader. It would be better to write a series of these books: one per state, one that addresses federal law, and perhaps one that covers the Uniform Code of Military Justice. ( )

I have read several NOLO books over the years and have never been disappointed. "Nolo's Encyclopedia of Everyday Law" lives up to that standard.

A wide variety of topics are covered--almost anything that you might need legal advice on in your day-to-day life. Chapters include: Houses, neighbors, landlords and tenants, workplace rights, small business, patents, copyrights, trademarks, money, driving, wills and estate planning, health care directives and powers of attorney, "older Americans," spouses and partners, parents and children, courts and mediation, and criminal law.

In typical NOLO fashion, the book is presented in a straight forward way for people without a legal background and is organized in a simple way to make it easy to quickly locate what you need. ( )

I read large chunks of this book--some in reaction to things that were going on in my social circles, and some just because I read things if they are sitting there. Since it is an "encyclopedia," the chapters do not really lean on each other. By "everyday law," the book means laws that most ordinary people will have to deal with in their lifetimes, especially aspects of civil law such as family, home buying and leasing, and employment laws. You can almost think of it as "law about life's transitions."

The sections I read in which I had more background seemed to be accurate. The treatment of each topic was, due to space constraints, very shallow and did not yield much new information to me. However, each chapter did explain some of the basic concepts and vocabulary that would allow the reader to make more specific queries, and in some cases tables summarized state by state differences or listed the sections of the relevant state codes. When a younger friend just out of college was visiting and telling us about the very small business he was trying to start with two friends, I realized from his questions that this would be a great book for him. It covered basics about small businesses, the house he was renting, his job, etc.

Thus I am going to suggest that this is a great book to give someone between the ages of 15 and 25. It will fill in a lot of the details that age group hasn't picked up on yet. If you are older and more experienced (at least vicariously through your friends), you will probably find it to be less valuable although still probably worth thumbing through at the library. ( )

I could recommend this book for a person not in the legal world, who needs an easy-to-navigate guide. The sections are well organized and written in a style that makes for understanding without dumbing down. Not terribly exciting, but that's not the purpose. ( )