The skills lawyers wield in courtrooms across the country are the result of years of study. As much as we'd like to cultivate these same skills, the truth is that you cannot know how a lawyer thinks and works without studying the law itself.

Now there's an easier way to get the same foundational knowledge as lawyers - without the enormous time and financial commitment. Over the span of 48 lectures, four experienced lawyers and teachers recreate key parts of the first-year law student experience, introducing you to main areas of law most every beginning student studies.

You'll start with 12 lectures on litigation and legal practice that offer eye-opening answers to many questions about the art and craft of legislation. In the second 12 lectures, you'll learn how criminal law and procedure - an area of law dramatized by countless TV shows - really works. Additional lectures investigate the civic procedures courts follow to resolve disputes about substantive rights and examine broader questions any system of litigation must address. And 12 lectures are devoted entirely to the stranger-than-fiction topic of tort law.

Enriched with famous cases from the annals of American law and powerful arguments by some of history's most successful lawyers, these lectures offer access to an often intimidating, surprisingly accessible, and civically important field.