Ill-Gotten Gains: Evasion, Blackmail, Fraud, and Kindred Puzzles of the Law

One of the things that attracts some people to lawyers and repels the rest of us is their ability to see and create loopholes. If the law is an ass, it is a very clever one. This book, by a University of Pennsylvania law professor, investigates the loophole phenomenon to a fare-thee-well. Want to use damaging information about a competitor to keep her away from an interview for a job you're both vying for, but don't want to violate the extortion statutes? Then see p. 2. Mad enough at your son to want to burn his house down with him in it but don't want to get convicted of first-degree murder? The recipe for that is on p. 38. Katz serves up a rich variety of examples and their variations to arrive at a general theory of what lawyers are doing when they -- legally -- walk their clients around a law. Truth be told though, the examples are a lot more compelling than the theory.