Law Commons^™

Securities And Commerical Law Research, Adeen Postar

Adeen Postar

No abstract provided.

Non-English Materials For The English Speaker : European Languages, Erin Gow

Erin Gow

So many legal materials are in languages other than English worldwide, that it is inevitable that most of us will need to find or access one of these documents at some point. Foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) librarians often work with materials in languages in which they are not fluent, and can provide useful ideas and insight for the non-FCIL specialist faced with this type of research. This portion of a 2019 AALL webinar titled "Non-English Materials for the English Speaker" focuses on European languages, and provides practical guidance in finding English translations of European laws, tips and techniques …

This Is Your Brain On Research: Cognitive Theory And Assignment Construction, Jennifer R. Mart-Rice, Franklin Runge, Alyson Drake

Jennifer Mart-Rice

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …

The State Of Legal Research Education: A Survey Of First-Year Legal Research Programs, Or “Why Johnny And Jane Cannot Research”, Caroline L. Osborne

Caroline L. Osborne

None available.

Legal Research And The World Of Thinkable Thoughts, Robert C. Berring

Robert Berring

It is difficult to properly describe technology’s impact on legal information. The impact created a generational gap between those who learned their research skills before the change and current students. The habits of the new generation of legal researchers point toward a change in the way that we can think about the law.

Sources Of American Law: An Introduction To Legal Research, Tina M. Brooks, Beau Steenken

Tina M. Brooks

At its most basic definition the practice of law comprises conducting research to find relevant rules of law and then applying those rules to the specific set of circumstances faced by a client. However, in American law, the legal rules to be applied derive from myriad sources, complicating the process and making legal research different from other sorts of research. This text introduces first-year law students to the new kind of research required to study and to practice law. It seeks to demystify the art of legal research by following a “Source and Process” approach. First, the text introduces students …

Teaching Cost-Effective Research Skills: Tips For Effective And Efficient Legal Research, Rebecca Mattson, Theresa K. Tarves

Theresa Tarves

Being a cost-effective researcher is not necessarily just about the legal research resources available where an attorney practices. Budgetary concerns are prevalent across all legal markets, from solos and public interest to large law firms. As the legal field struggles with clients who want greater efficiencies from their attorneys and alternative fee arrangements, many of which state that attorneys will not bill clients for legal research database fees, it is becoming more important than ever to teach law students and attorneys how to use alternative resources effectively and efficiently.

Why Can't I Just Use Lexis Or Westlaw? Promoting Lesser Known Legal Research Platforms To Law Students, Theresa K. Tarves

Theresa Tarves

It can be difficult to convince law students to try new resources outside of Westlaw and Lexis, especially when these two resources seemingly have it all from a law student’s perspective. How do we expose law students to lesser known legal research resources so that they can be well-informed researchers who do not become dependent on only a few resources to carry them through their entire legal careers?

Teaching Cost-Effective Research Skills: Tips For Effective And Efficient Legal Research, Rebecca Mattson, Theresa K. Tarves

Rebecca A. Mattson

Being a cost-effective researcher is not necessarily just about the legal research resources available where an attorney practices. Budgetary concerns are prevalent across all legal markets, from solos and public interest to large law firms. As the legal field struggles with clients who want greater efficiencies from their attorneys and alternative fee arrangements, many of which state that attorneys will not bill clients for legal research database fees, it is becoming more important than ever to teach law students and attorneys how to use alternative resources effectively and efficiently.

Before They Even Start: Hope And Incoming 1ls, Barbara Brunner

Barbara Brunner

Newly-accepted law school 1Ls often express interest in how they should spend the summer before starting their fall courses in order to be best prepared for success in their first semester. This desire to have a "leg up" on law school success leads those of us teaching first-year courses to think more deeply about what constitutes a "good preparation" for the unique experiences that new law students will face, and what skills are really necessary to increase their possibilities of success, especially in the first semester. Over the past few years, I have compiled a list of activities which I …

The Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives And The Contemporary Researcher, John Jacob

John Jacob

No abstract provided.

Filling The Google Gaps: Harnessing The Power Of Google Through Instruction, Rebecca Mattson

Rebecca A. Mattson

This article discusses teaching proper use of Google and Google Scholar in the legal research classroom.

Navigating The Dark Morass: A First-Year Student's Guide To The Library, Maureen Straub Kordesh

Maureen Straub Kordesh

No abstract provided.

Toward A Writing-Centered Legal Education, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The future of legal education should bridge the divide between learning and practicing the law. This requires three things. First, tuition should bear some reasonable relationship to graduates’ employment outcomes. Perhaps Harvard is justified in charging $50,000 in tuition, but a fourth-tier law school is not. Second, no school should resist infusing more practical skills training into the curriculum. This does not mean that law schools should focus on adding clinics and externships to the curriculum. The focus should be on developing critical thinkers and persuasive writers that can solve real-world legal problems. Third, law schools should be transparent about …

Teaching Legal Research And Writing With Actual Legal Work: Extending Clinical Education Into The First Year, Michael A. Millemann, Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

In this article, the co-authors argue that legal research and writing (LRW) teachers should use actual legal work to generate assignments. They recommend that clinical and LRW teachers work together to design, co-teach, and evaluate such courses. They describe two experimental courses they developed together and co-taught to support and clarify their arguments. They contend that actual legal work motivates students to learn the basic skills of research, analysis and writing, and thus helps to accomplish the primary goals of LRW courses. It also helps students to explore new dimensions of basic skills, including those related to the development and …

Issues And Trends In Collection Development For East Asia Legal Materials, Xiaomeng Zhang, Joostaek Lee, Keiko Okuhara, Evelyn Ma

Jootaek Lee

The authors delineate the general policy and guidelines for developing foreign and transnational law collections in U.S. law libraries, and they analyze factors that shape East Asian collections, such as law libraries’ preservation and digitization efforts and their related cost-efficiency, and the availability and quality of English translations. The authors then discuss the main sources for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese law.

Understanding The "Other" International Agreements, Ryan Harrington

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

The President routinely enters into international agreements with foreign states that circumvent the requirements in the Treaty Clause, leaving many researchers with a cloudy

understanding of the international agreement-making process in the United States. In many instances, Congress has preauthorized the President to negotiate and conclude an international commitment. In others, the majority of both houses of Congress, rather than two-thirds of the Senate, approve of an international agreement. Even more troublingly, in the last half century, the United States has come to rely on yet another form of international agreements, called “political commitments,” that create nonlegally binding expectations and …

Flying The Flag, Aaron S. Kirschenfeld

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

This paper analyzes the accuracy with which descriptions of subsequent negative treatment are applied by an online citator system that employs a hierarchical controlled vocabulary -- Shepard's Citations -- as opposed to one that does not -- KeyCite. After a contextual review of the citator's history, a framework for assessment is proposed and employed to test the hypothesis that a citator employing a hierarchical controlled vocabulary would produce more accurate descriptions. The study's results suggest that a system making use of a hierarchical controlled vocabulary does apply descriptions of subsequent negative treatment in a marginally more accurate way. A discussion …

Answering The Call: Flipping The Classroom To Prepare Practice-Ready Attorneys, Alex Berrio Matamoros

Alex Berrio Matamoros

In the rough and changing landscape of the legal job market, legal employers have called on law schools to prepare “practice ready” attorneys — newly minted members of the bar with better honed practical skills than the first year lawyers of the past. The increasing emphasis on legal skills sheds light on an interesting paradox within legal education; in legal skills courses, those that best lend themselves to active learning experiences, instructors frequently fill valuable classroom time with passive lectures to convey the related theory and best practices. Recently, several legal skills instructors have adopted a flipped classroom model to …

Research Strategy And Assignment Intake Tips, Amy Wright

Amy J. Wright

The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods: Guide To Research And Literature, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

This article maps research strategies concerning the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and explores some research issues relating to the Convention and its interpretation. More specifically, it provides guidance on where to start, how to find the leading texts, commentaries and practitioners' guides, and where to find the texts of documents. Finally, this article describes some new Internet-based projects, examines where to find additional information, and examines how to keep "up-to-date" with this burgeoning area of international sales law.

Experiential Legal Writing: The New Approach To Practicing Like A Lawyer, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Law students engage in various types of “experiential” learning activities while in school, such as clinics and externships, but they graduate without the experience necessary to practice law. This is traceable to a glaring deficiency at most law schools: a writing program that is comprehensive, properly sequenced, and integrated across and throughout the law school curriculum.

First, most graduates have never drafted the documents they will encounter in law practice. Additionally, they have not drafted and re-drafted such documents while also participating in real-world simulations as they would in actual practice. Instead, students graduate having drafted an appellate brief, a …

No Shoehorn Required: How A Required, Three- Year, Persuasion-Based Legal Writing Program Easily Fits Within The Broader Law School Curriculum, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In this article, we incorporate our proposal into the broader curricular context, and argue for more separation, not more integration, among the analytical, practical, and experiential pillars of legal education. All three are indispensable—and independent—pillars of real-world legal education:[1] (1) the analytical focuses on critical thinking; (2) legal writing combines—and refines—thinking through practical skills training; and (3) experiential learning involves students in the practice of law. To help law students master all three, the curriculum should be designed in a largely sequential (although sometimes concurrent) order, to embrace, not blur, their substantive differences, and to approach inter-foundational collaboration with …

The Promise And Perils Of Massive Open Online Courses, Leslie Street, Sara Sampson

Leslie Street

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One—It’S Not What You Offer; It’S What You Require – Part Ii (In A Three-Part Series), Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

This essay (part two of a three-part series) strives to begin a collaborative discussion with legal writing, clinical, and doctrinal faculty about what “change” in legal education should mean. In Part I, the authors rolled out a blueprint for transformative change in legal writing pedagogy, which includes: (1) more required skills courses that mirror the actual practice of law; (2) a three-year program that includes up to four writing credits in every semester; and (3) increased collaboration between legal writing professors and doctrinal faculty. In this essay, we get more specific, and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that builds …

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Law schools have an ethical duty to train effective legal writers who understand that the skills acquired in law school are intended to serve something greater than themselves — the bench, bar, and broader community. Training good writers — and good people — can happen by creating a writing curriculum that focuses on persuasive advocacy, public service, and honest legal representation from the first semester to the last. This change will be a challenge to legal writing professors everywhere, but with proper institutional support and collaboration, law schools can prepare their students for a profession “that depends on flawless writing, …

Legal Writing--What's Next? Real-World Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

So, why didn’t they teach me this in law school?” The problem has nothing to do with ‘bad’ or uncaring teachers, but with a pedagogical approach that mistakenly divorces the acquisition of legal knowledge—and practical skills training—from their functional roles in the real world. In law school, students are typically required to write a memorandum or an appellate brief, but without knowing how each document fits into the broader context of actual law practice, the student’s ability to put that knowledge to practical use is limited. Every litigation document, whether it is, for example, a legal memorandum, complaint, motion to …

What About The Majority? Considering The Legal Research Practices Of Solo And Small Firm Attorneys, Joseph D. Lawson

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

Solo and small firm practitioners account for the majority of attorneys practicing in the United States. However, they are regularly underrepresented in studies of attorneys’ research practices, which tend to focus on attorneys in larger practice settings. This article reports the results of a local survey in which more than 80 percent of respondents fell into this forgotten demographic. Comparison of the local study with a recent national survey demonstrates that greater consideration of smaller firms could lead to a different understanding of fee-based online resource usage among the demographic, which may have widespread implications for public and academic law …

Law Firm Legal Research Requirements And The Legal Academy Beyond Carnegie, Patrick Meyer

Patrick Meyer

What types of research resources must new hires know how to use, and in which format(s)? To answer this question, this article starts by identifying the historical research deficiencies of new attorneys. The author goes on to summarize four recent and regarded law firm practice skills studies, as well as results of the author's 2010 law firm survey. This article concludes by identifying a three part plan to improve the lacking research skills of new attorneys.