Baicker-McKee: It was a simple desire to provide a practical response to a recurring need, and a recognition that nothing in the market filled that need. The demands of the law often arrive quickly and under fierce time constraints. Sometimes it's not the law review coverage you need, but instead just a clear, crisp, and reliable answer to your legal question. Our handbook offers a mini-treatise approach - a balance that provides the level of depth that judges or practitioners need on-the-go, presented in a manner that lets them find the answer and get going again.

Janssen: Candidly, that is the magic we tripped upon in designing our handbook. We reprint the text of each rule, so the readers first have the actual language at their fingertips. Then, we summarize the rule in action. How is each rule applied in practice? What are the pitfalls to each rule, and what are the strategic opportunities? In what clever ways are the courts using the Rules, and what opportunities do those innovations create? In just a few minutes of reading, we give the reader this sort of comprehensive treatment for each rule.

Corr: Actually, this is the 16th edition. And that's also the answer to the question. We re-research every rule each year, gathering the new cases and the new changes. We avoid having a dated product by republishing the Handbook with revised, current content each year; that also requires some judicious trimming each year to fit the one-volume package. This year, for example, the Handbook contains more than 1,200 new citations to recently published authorities, most of them from 2008. In short, we work extremely hard to keep each edition more current than anything else you will find on the market.

Baicker-McKee: We wanted to provide the same sort of optimally user-friendly resource as we had every other year. Last year's Handbook contained the brand-new rule language, a summary of unusual issues resolved by the redrafting, and a prediction of how the new language might, on a rule-by-rule level, affect federal practice. The new Rules became effective December 1, 2007, and our readers had the new Rules - and our commentary - two weeks earlier, just in time to be on top of the changes. This year we now have, for the first time, caselaw interpreting those restyling amendments.

Janssen: In a word, discipline. There are three authors, and all of us have been at it now for nearly 20 years. We each start our annual research in the early summer and finish up our revisions by Labor Day. No exceptions. We've been delighted by how well the Handbook has been accepted by practitioners, judges, and libraries, and it is important to us to never let down the readers.

Corr: That is a story we are happy to relate. West has told us that the Handbook is, each and every year, among the most-subscribed and best-selling titles in its federal catalog. And that's West - the national leader in legal publishing. It's an incredible source of pride for each of us. The Handbook has been cited in increasing numbers by federal and state judges, at both the trial and appellate levels, as the primary authority for the correct interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. And our companion text, A Student's Guide to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, has now been adopted at a quarter of all of America's law schools.

Baicker-McKee: A few years back, we asked several very experienced federal litigators to speak to that precise issue. Does the Handbook add value for them? We received a resounding "yes." The pattern of Handbook sales sweeps across all categories of federal litigators. It is really designed for everyone in federal civil practice - new attorneys, attorneys new to the federal courts, experienced federal attorneys, the bench, and academics. The need for quick, concise treatment of the Rules transcends experience - everyone needs to know what the Rules mean.