Law 798: Advanced Legal Research

The Advanced Legal Research course is designed to allow interested students to further expand their general legal research knowledge and skills. Additionally, students will have an opportunity to learn research sources and skills in specific legal areas of their choice. The course will cover the following topics: Basic legal sources and research refresher; Online searching skills (Boolean logic, advanced natural language searching); Advanced paper based legal research tools (CLEs, loose-leaf topical reporters, specialized sources); Advanced Lexis and Westlaw (Citation analysis, specialized databases); Internet-based legal resources, including subscription sources (BNA, CCH, etc.); and Cost-effective use of print and online sources. Students will be graded on four short research assignments, classroom participation, and one major project in the form of an annotated pathfinder on an area of law of interest to the student. The pathfinder will incorporate not just bibliographic descriptions, but analysis on how to do research in this area, evaluative discussion of relevant research materials, and detailed accounts of how and when to use the material. The final deliverable for the project will be a minimum of twenty pages long.