it makes legal language come to life.  It's the kind of book I wish I'd read before law school, and the perfect read for non-lawyers who wonder what they're missing." -- Jeremy Blachman, author of Anonymous Lawyer "A lighthearted but lucid explanation of legalese." -- William Safire, The New York Times "A gem of a book: bright, lucid, and compelling. I found myself laughing out loud, and wondering why lawyers can't just eat their torts and go home." -- Cameron Stracher, author of Double Billing and publisher of the New York Law School Law Review "The Party of the First Part" is an erudite, hilarious tour through 21st Century American legalese. Alan Freedman leads us through the ankle-grabbing underbrush of redundancy, dead phrases, faux Latin, and mindless obfuscation into which every reader - and writer - of legal documents eventually must stagger. Freedman is a sure-footed guide who knows the territory. Time and again, he yanks up a hoary word or phrase and shows us its tangled roots. Sometimes we find, clutching a root with a deathgrip, an advocate of the so-called "Precision School" of legal drafting. These lawyers and profs fear that awful chaos would result if lawyers quit using ancient Anglo/French/Latin phrases, in favor of words used by 21st Century Americans in everyday life. Chaos? Well gosh, people might have to *sue* if they can't agree what a word or phrase written in 21st Century English means. Uh-huh, thinks I: as if they aren't already suing by the