Advanced Legal Research LAW 670

Course Number: LAW 670

Course Credits: 3

Building on the skills learned during the first-year Legal Skills program, Advanced Legal Research has two primary objectives: to make students more effective legal researchers, and to make students more knowledgeable consumers of legal information after they are in practice. The course begins with a discussion of secondary sources, which are very useful for finding primary legal authority and for understanding the law, and then moves on to an intensive review of the basics—case law, digests, statutory law, and citators. We also cover materials to which students may not have been exposed during their law school careers—administrative law, legislative history, New York legal research, and legal research using the Internet. If time permits, we will also cover international law research. Both hardcopy and electronic sources will be covered. There will be advanced training in Lexis and Westlaw.

The final project is an online research guide that will go through several drafts during the course of the semester. Students will be expected to do short in-class presentations on their guides, and to provide brief written comments on their classmates’ guides. They will also be expected to compose a short blog post on a useful Internet resource they discovered while working on their research guide. Each of these assignments is weighted and factors into the final grade in the course. Students will also be expected to complete several CALI assignments during the course of the semester.

Enrollment limited to 12 students.