Linda Silver Dranoff’s Everyone’s Guide to the Law is a single-volume “attempt to demystify the law for the average person.” In other words, it undertakes to summarize our tangled legal landscape in just over 400 pages. The inherent problem in projects of this kind is that any simplification of the law has to get around the painful fact that the law isn’t simple. Because courts make their decisions by considering often-contradictory prior decisions and by applying vague, insufficient, or novel legislation, “the law” is ultimately unfixed and unyielding of straight answers.

If anyone could pull this job off, it’s Silver Dranoff, who has been a lawyer for 23 years, and for 19 of those has been answering readers’ questions about the law in Chatelaine. She’s not a legal academic, and we’re glad for that: Everyone’s Guide is not a “study” or “appreciation” of the law in Canada, but a valuable survey of where it currently sits on a variety of practical matters that concern all of us at some point in our lives.

The chapters are arranged according to social issues and conventions (“Birth Issues,” “Working Life,” “Planning for the Future”) instead of formal legal headings. Some areas are only thinly covered, presumably because typical readers have little contact with them (the book will be of no help to criminals wondering about maximum sentences or bail procedures, for example).

This kind of general overview of multiple issues makes Everyone’s Guide better for satisfying idle curiosities or determining barroom bets – “20 bucks says the wife gets the house after divorce” – than providing a reference source with the necessary depth to save readers from having to consult a lawyer on serious matters. This is no do-it-yourself kit (and, to be fair, doesn’t pretend to be) but an excellent resource for those with general legal interests or concerns who like to know the background prior to throwing themselves (and their wallets) before a professional.

The writing in Everyone’s Guide is clear (thankfully free of ponderous footnotes and full-case citations) and reads much like Silver Dranoff’s Chatelaine columns. This is a strength, and enables her attempt at a demystification of the law to be largely successful. Writing about complex matters for a broad audience without condescension is a rare skill, but is one displayed throughout this thoughtful book.