Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.

Legal Research And Legal Education In Africa: The Challenge For Information Literacy, Vicki Lawal

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This paper analyses legal research within the context of legal education in Africa, it examines some of the challenges of electronic legal research in view of the influences of online legal electronic resources and Computer Assisted legal Research (CALR) and the importance of information literacy in addressing some of the issues raised especially with regards to undergraduate legal education.

Keynote Address: Remarks At The Workshop On Tapping Into The World Of Electronic Legal Knowledge , Muna Ndulo

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

Professor Muna Ndulo of Cornell Law School presented the keynote address at the 2007 Starr Workshop, “Tapping into the World of Electronic Legal Knowledge.” The workshop took place at Cornell Law School October 7-10, 2007 and was co-sponsored by the Starr Foundation, New York University Law Library, and Cornell Law Library.

Professor Ndulo addresses the topic of new information technologies and their importance to legal research and teaching.

U.S. Law And Legal Research, Pat Court

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This presentation on the basics of U.S. law offers a general outline of the fundamental sources of U.S. law. With a foundation in the three branches of government and the laws, court decisions, and regulations that flow from them, the speaker demonstrated free and fee-based electronic resources frequently used for legal research. The focus is on Westlaw, LexisNexis, PACER the Public Access to Court Electronic Records), GPOAccess, and the official U.S. Supreme Court web site. While the web has made it possible for universities, governments, courts, and others to put user-friendly law on the web for free, the most extensive …

Playing Beyond The Rules: A Realist And Rhetoric-Based Approach To Researching The Law And Solving Legal Problems, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The proposed realist and rhetorical approach to legal research applies to every conceivable legal problem and provides the student a conceptual foundation not only for solving any legal dispute, but for successfully completing any transactions with which he or she will be confronted. Part I of this article will demonstrate why law students should learn to research the relevant audiences in the legal drama and to research the unpublished and often unwritten rules and practices that these audiences follow. Part II will show how. Part III will present a comprehensive legal problem solving model that integrates these new dimensions of …

Joining Hands And Smarts: Teaching Manual Legal Research Through Collaborative Learning Groups, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

My hypothesis was that a group of law students who research a problem together will learn legal research better than students who work individually. I further hypothesized that if the group research could be undertaken during class time under the direct supervision of the instructor and the teaching assistant, the students would be less intimidated by manual research tools and would be better prepared to work on their own. The following three-step method was employed: (1) the students read about the tool; (2) the instructor discussed the tool in class; and (3) immediately following the discussion, students went to the …