Yale law professor Ian Ayres walks through the basic tools lawyers use to interpret statutory text, part of his Coursera course A Law Student's Toolkit. The lecture is aimed at first-year and prospective law students who need a working vocabulary for statutory analysis before they hit casebooks and cold calls. Ayres lays out how to approach a statute methodically, identifying the interpretive moves and terminology that come up repeatedly in legal argument, such as parsing plain language and structure before turning to outside sources of meaning. As one entry in a modular lecture series, it is short and focused rather than exhaustive, built to be paired with the course's accompanying reading list for students who want to go deeper into the subject on their own.