The studies in this volume use ethnographic, ethnomethodological, and sociolinguistic research to demonstrate how legal agents conduct their practices and exercise their authority in relation to non-expert participants and broader publics. Instead of treating law as a body of doctrines, or law and society as a relationship between legal institutions and an external society, the studies in this volume closely examine law at work: specific legal practices and social interactions produced in national and international settings. These settings include courtrooms and other tribunals, consultations between lawyers and clients, and media forums in which government officials address international law. Because law is a public institution, and legal actions are publicly accountable, technical law must interface with non-expert members of the public. The embodied actions and interactions that comprise the interface between professional and lay participants in legal settings therefore must do justice to legal traditions and statutory obligations while also contending with mundane interactional routines, ordinary reasoning, and popular expectations.Specific chapters examine topics such as family disputes in a system of Sharia Law; rhetorical contestations about possible violations of international law during a violent conflict in the Middle-East; the transformation of a courtroom hearing brought about by the virtual presence of remote witnesses relayed through a video link; the practices through which written records are used to mediate and leverage a witness's testimony; and the discursive and interactional practices through which authorized parties use legal categories to problems with individual conduct. Each chapter shows that it makes a profound difference to the way we understand the law when we examine its meaning and application in practice.

Introduction: Law at WorkBaudouin Dupret, Michael Lynch, and Tim BerardSection I. Practical Action, Situated Interaction, and the Salience of LawThe EditorsChapter One: The Practical Grammar of Law and Its Relation to TimeBaudouin Dupret and Jean-Noël FerrieChapter Two: Aspiring Magistrates: Entry Exams and General Traineeship at the Court of LecceLuisa Zappulli and Karen Latricia HoughChapter Three: Practical Solutions: Praxiologial Analysis of Judgments in Civil HearingsPedtro Heitor Barros GeraldoSection II. Practical Pedagogies in the Performance of Legal ActivitiesThe EditorsChapter Four: Hearing Clients' Talk as Lawyers' Work: The Case of Public Legal Consultation ConferenceShiro KashimuraChapter Five: Producing Records of Testimony: Some Competent Legal Methods for Incompetent TrialsKenneth LibermanSection III. Speech, Text, and Technology in TestimonyThe EditorsChapter Six: Reporting Talk When Testifying: Intertextuality, Consistency and Transformation in Witnesses Use of Direct Reported SpeechRenata GalatoloChapter Seven: Turning a Witness: The Textual and Interactional Production of a Statement in Adversarial TestimonyMichael LynchChapter Eight : "Is there someone in my videoconference room?" Managing Remote Witnesses in Distributed CourtroomsChristian Licoppe and Laurence DumoulinSection IV. Deviance, Membership Categories, and LegalitiesThe EditorsChapter Nine: Hate Crimes, Labels, and Accounts: Pragmatic Reflections on U.S. Hate CrimesTim BerardChapter Ten: Descriptions of Deviance: Making the Case for Professional HelpStephen Hester and Sally HesterChapter Eleven: Discursive Cartographies, Moral Practices: International Law and the Gaza WarLena Jayyusi