A client comes to a lawyer with a difficult legal problem, involving a complex set of facts. The lawyer then researches the legal issues, finding a cluster of cases and statutes - almost all from the jurisdiction in which the problem arises. In order to advise the client (and, if necessary, to litigate the case), the lawyer must analyze, distinguish, reconcile, and interrelate the authorities in the cluster, seeing them as a group indicating the direction of that state's law, as well as seeing them separately. Cases and Problems in Criminal Law contains the caselaw that law students have to know and helps professors to recreate that experience so their students can learn how to handle it.

A Teacher's Manual is available to professors.