The focus of Linguistics in the courtroom is narrower than the title implies: It is not intended for, say, linguists who are courtroom interpreters or those who are concerned with reforming jury instructions to make them more intelligible. Rather, this is a succinct, authoritative guidebook for linguists who give scientific advice to attorneys about linguistic issues in criminal and civil court cases. Consultants frequently are asked to write reports, filed under oath, that are intended to influence judges and worry opposing counsel; Roger Shuy cogently describes such documents, their purposes, and the processes for drawing them up (chapter 6). In civil cases, report writers are usually cross-examined under oath in a discovery procedure called a “deposition” (chapter 7). Occasionally, the linguist also appears as an expert witness in trial appearances before judges and juries (chapters 8–9). These chapters alone are well worth the price of the book.

Although he was by no means the first linguist to testify in court as an expert – for example, the American dialectologist Raven McDavid (1977:126) reports having testified in a case involving competing trademarks of two potato chip makers – in the early 1980s Roger Shuy began a series of major, groundbreaking applications of linguistics to law on such topics as trademarks, the meanings of words in statutes and contracts, the identification of speakers on the basis of their accent and dialect, and especially discourse analysis of surreptitiously recorded evidence. A number of other academic linguists have followed (and expanded on) Shuy's pioneering leads and have benefited from his prolific publications. Linguists in the English-speaking world who have established solid reputations as legal consultants include Sharon Ash, David Barnhart, Ronald Butters, Jack Chambers, Carole Chaski, Janet Cotterill, Malcolm Coulthard, Bethany Dumas, Diana Eades, William Eggington, Edward Finegan, Peter French, John Gibbons, William Labov, Sanford Shane, Lawrence Solan, Gail Stygall, and Margaret van Naerssen. These scholars have all published work in the field and frequently present the results of their research at major linguistics conferences (see Shuy's chapter 13 for an introductory list of important publications). The field interests a number of eminent scholarly societies and their journals, including the specialized International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL), and a wealth of scholarly activity now underlies Shuy's indication (chapter 11) that one practical outcome of legal consulting is the opportunity to use casework as the basis for academic publication. Also, courses in “language and law” have become popular in universities throughout the world (chapter 12).

Besides forming the foundation for a scholarly field, “forensic linguistic” consulting pays well (25–26). (Shuy does not fully approve of the term “forensic linguistics,” but he bows to popular usage.) Consultants sometimes charge a reduced rate based on a client's ability to pay, but Shuy mentions a bottom figure of $125 per hour for American court-appointed work, and the rate is almost always higher, topping out (in my experience) at about $350. Consulting is potentially so lucrative that a novice might take on a case hoping for an easy way to turn a fast fat fee. However, Shuy warns, there are dicey ethical issues, and inexperienced, marginally qualified “forensic linguists” will find themselves in extremely uncomfortable and professionally embarrassing situations. Lawyers do not suffer fools gladly, especially when an expert's foolishness can be turned to advantage in a criminal trial or in the various stages of litigation (see 57–58, “Being ready to be attacked”). Judges, too, can be scathing in their response to professional incompetence, and juries have a way of seeing through ill-thought-out testimony from putative “hired guns.” Often, the opposing side will employ its own linguistics expert, who may be a seasoned veteran in writing devastating rebuttal reports and advising attorneys how to ask questions that discredit the squirming novice's work (123). Temperament is also important: The American justice system is strongly adversarial, and an expert, however competent, who is thin-skinned and unable to coolly withstand blistering attack is probably not in the right business (57).

The best consultant-linguist is first of all a generalist who has a broad working knowledge of linguistics (chapter 1). A Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field is largely a prerequisite, as are significant publications in relevant domains. Indeed, on-paper qualifications can be an important factor in getting courts to allow one to testify at all. It is particularly dangerous (and unethical) to take up a case that is far outside one's field (20, 24). For example, lexicography is crucially important in trademark and contract disputes; a linguist who lacks extensive professional understanding of dictionary making should not consult on such cases without first undertaking any necessary additional study (8). Even worse is the pretender who is not really a linguist at all: “A specialization in Old English may be great for the university, but it hardly qualifies as expertise for a trademark case” (123). The duplicity and professional incompetence of a few such frauds is legend among forensic linguists.

Probably no linguist has given more thought to ethical questions than has Shuy, and LITC does a great service in setting forth such principles as “Don't take cases for which you are not qualified” – and also the following:

• Don't take cases for which your personal moral beliefs will prevent you from giving your best efforts (20, 124).
• Don't persuade yourself that you can salvage hopeless cases (23, 35, 127).

However, in practice, some principles are not as simple as they may seem. For example, the honest expert is ethically committed to dispassionate science – avoiding advocacy – and must swear under penalty of perjury to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, whether in testifying or in signing reports:

• “[Do not] … become an advocate for the client. Our only responsibility is to analyze the data in the case as objectively as possible. One way to control this is to be certain that the analysis you do would be exactly the same if you were doing it for the opposing side” (125; see also 35, 119).
• One should never give in to the temptation to “stretch the truth a bit” (71); “we must tell the truth at all times” (123).

Yet at other places LitC offers seemingly different advice:

• “[If] the case you work on has some downsides … although it may seem like an ethical issue not to present the negative aspects in your testimony, this is not really your problem. It's up to the lawyers on the other side to bring them out” (124–125).
• “It is sometimes the case that the linguist on the other side of the case has better language data to work with (this has happened to me)” (118; emphasis mine).

Such precepts seem to be somewhat at odds with each other: If the expert refuses to mention the “negative aspects,” is the expert really telling the whole truth? If one withholds information, is one not being an “advocate,” at least to a limited degree? Similarly, if the expert's conclusion is based on knowledge that the other side “has better language data to work with” – but contradicts the conclusion of the other side – it is hard to see how such an expert can claim to have conducted an analysis that “would be exactly the same if you were doing it for the opposing side.”

My purpose here is not to challenge Shuy, whose own honesty is above reproach (and whose bravery in discussing these matters in print has my admiration), but rather to suggest that peculiarities of our system of justice sometimes challenge the rectitude of even the most purely objective scientist. In the end, Shuy's purpose seems to be to exhort consultants to monitor their behavior rigorously, at every step of every case, with respect to objectivity and truthfulness.

Shuy also raises an unresolved ethical issue: One linguist has publicly pronounced that consultants “should always report whether they are paid for work in law cases” when discussing the results of that same work “in speeches or writings,” and that anything less is a serious violation of professional ethics (128). Shuy notes that, in the case of pro bono work, such an announcement gives the appearance of “bragging about one's generosity and virtue,” and he concludes that the issue “has not been adequately resolved at this time” (129); as of this writing, neither the IAFL nor the Linguistic Society of America has taken a position on the issue. LITC does not explicitly note that advocacy can be a peril for those who do pro bono consulting (as well as for those who are paid handsomely). Frequently, one takes on no-fee work because one believes powerfully in the justice of the client's cause. The danger that political advocacy will color the expert's scientific thinking is at least as powerful as the desire to make one's paying clients happy. Vanity, too, can be a danger: We all like to win, and academics who lose public arguments may fear for their professional reputations.

I have done a good deal of forensic linguistic work myself, and I find very little in LITC to take issue with. True, Shuy seems to suggest – erroneously – that one cannot use as an income-tax deduction legitimate consulting expenses (books, computers, and the like) unless one incorporates (42). And I have reservations about this statement:

On the contrary, doesn't the very testimony that Shuy prescribes in itself require an opinion about “how the public actually pronounces”? That is, how can I testify about the “sameness or difference in the sounds used” in, say, CarMax and Car-X without knowing what possible pronunciations “the public” is likely to give to the sounds of the two names?

Otherwise, my issues with LITC mostly reflect differences in taste and temperament. I disagree with Shuy's observation that “judges … bore easily.” Unlike Shuy, I have never been told by a lawyer to dumb my testimony down to an “eight-grade education level” (102). Shuy dislikes PowerPoint; I can't imagine giving a presentation in his way, with a flip chart on an easel (104–6). Almost all of my communication with clients is by phone; Shuy prefers face-to-face meetings (48). He prescribes that experts dress like attorneys; for men, this means a “dark-colored suit (not a sports coat), a white shirt, and a conservative tie” (90). The advice lawyers have given me: “Look like what you are, a college professor, and wear a tweedy sports jacket.”

A few small objections aside, then, LITC is a fine book, important for both the novice and the experienced practitioner.