Research and Preparation of Legal Opinion

Author: Zhang Qing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The book has four distinctive features:
1. Knowledge-based. The format and structure of the book are designed to build and complete a legal analysis support system and a business process operation platform, aiming to guide readers to master the thinking mode of judicial practice, the macro mastery method of legal knowledge, the ability to identify and select legal provisions, and the techniques of standardized document writing in a short time. The book can be used as a teaching material for judicial documents in law schools.
2. Demonstrative. The legal opinions cited in the book are derived from real cases, not only diverse in material, broad in scope, and comprehensive in coverage, but also well-structured, complete in content, and detailed in argumentation, truly embodying the painstaking efforts of supervising lawyers.
3. Academic. The discussions in each section are not confined to the case itself but expand academically around the focal points of the individual case, combining critical evaluations of complex cases and integrating current academic frontiers in law with hot and focal issues in judicial practice.
4. Pioneering. The book opens up a new field in the study of judicial documents and can be considered the first pioneering work to systematically study, rationally summarize, and reveal the writing principles of "legal opinions."
A legal opinion is an important document in a lawyer's practice, and writing legal opinions is one of the main skills of a lawyer. A well-structured, meticulously organized, accurately analyzed, and appropriately argued legal opinion is not only a work guide for lawyers providing professional legal services to clients but also a full display of a lawyer's macro-control ability over complex legal relationships and micro-operation skills.
Preparing a legal opinion requires a lawyer to deeply understand the relevant facts, from the surface to the core, from one point to another, refining and filtering, and distinguishing truth from falsehood. At the same time, it requires a meticulous analysis of legal documents with different sources, different levels of authority, and different scopes of application, thereby providing correct analytical opinions and the best operational solutions to solve core legal issues.
Therefore, an excellent legal opinion is not only a practical extension of a lawyer's legal literacy but also a rational sublimation of a lawyer's practical operational skills. Only through the accumulation of extensive practical experience and careful analysis can a lawyer ensure that their legal opinion is truly based on facts and legal principles, and can they guarantee the smooth and efficient execution of business operations guided by the legal opinion.
As lawyers with years of practice, we deeply feel the importance of an excellent legal opinion for business operations and are also deeply regretful for the lack of a systematic book on the analysis and preparation of legal opinions. The original intention of writing this book is to summarize the experience and lessons from our own practice, discuss the regular issues in the preparation of legal opinions with our colleagues and experts from all walks of life, and contribute our modest efforts to promoting the overall improvement of the legal profession.
Preparing high-level legal opinions to better provide high-quality legal services to clients is a common aspiration and unremitting pursuit of all colleagues in the industry, including ourselves. To complete such a book that explores the writing principles of legal opinions, as there are no precedents to follow, we made the following attempts in the writing process:
1. To deepen the understanding of legal opinions for lawyers who rarely prepare them or are just learning, and to give readers who have never seen legal opinions a complete impression of a specific legal opinion, this book does not conduct partial or detailed analyses of legal opinions. The overall principle is to make a holistic or structural evaluation of the preparation of legal opinions.
2. The factual part and the legal analysis part of a legal opinion are closely related but have different preparation requirements. In view of this, we adopted the method of "mutual reference" in writing and analysis, mentioning the content of legal analysis in the evaluation of the factual part when necessary, and in the evaluation of the legal analysis part, we no longer repeat the relevant facts but simply indicate the corresponding page numbers in the factual part to make the structure compact and the content rigorous.
3. As an exploratory work that systematically introduces legal opinions, this book provides as detailed explanations as possible on the preparation methods of each part of a legal opinion, especially the skills and techniques for preparing the legal analysis part. Considering the many commendable aspects and some shortcomings in the cited examples, we also included some "supplementary evaluations" to promptly point out the strengths and weaknesses of the examples in terms of preparation, especially in the use of language and text, for reference and learning by lawyers and readers.