Lawyer and editor Michael S. Lief has collaborated with two law professors Mitchell Caldwell and Ben Bycel, to write "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law" (1998). Deputy district attorney Lief, et al spent five years researching in the National Archives and newspaper files for the finest closing arguments in American history, for trials that stand the test of time. War crimes, nuclear power transgressions, and equal rights are presented in chapters titled "Architects of Genocide", "Death by Plutonium", and a "Man's World No More". Each chapter has an historical introduction, a biography of the lawyer, an analysis of trial tactics, and a transcript of… the summation. The authors have written this book for law practitioners as well as the lay audience. They state their purpose in the introduction to the book "...read how these experts weave their tales of betrayal, violence, oppression, and hope, and see what can be done by a quick-thinking lawyer, armed with his wits - and the power of his words." Lief has been a Navy submarine diver, a newspaper editor and a litigator in the district attorney's office of Ventura, California.
H. Mitchell Caldwell is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law. A former deputy district attorney, he specializes in death-penalty litigation before the California Supreme Court.