The Little Black Book is designed to fill a gap in law school pedagogy: the skills needed for succeeding in law school competitions. Law schools perpetually struggle with the need to fit an ever-expanding universe of both doctrinal studies and skills development into a finite curriculum. Training in competition skills inevitable gets squeezed and edited down, and sometimes even left on the cutting room floor. Yet students can benefit enormously from these competitions, as they provide a way for students to practice and develop skills that will benefit themselves and their clients once they enter the workforce.

Part I of this manual is designed to guide the user in applying the analytical, writing, and research skills students learned (or are learning) in the first-year courses to the task of preparing an appellate brief. The manual does presuppose some background in legal analysis and persuasive argument. Part I also instructs students on developing and presenting an oral argument based on their briefs. Part II focuses on non-brief writing competitions, specifically the Client Counseling, Negotiation, and Mediation Competitions.

Bucholtz, Frey, and Tatum have created a book that is easily adapted to a broad spectrum of instruction: individual, self-teaching, coach-student training, and classroom teaching.