Legal Res. for Legal Scholars

Catalog description

This course will offer students advanced training on the sources, tools, tactics, and strategies commonly used to conduct in-depth, academic research on legal topics. Students will learn effective methods for finding and using legal scholarship in various forms, including journal articles, scholarly monographs, edited collections, amicus briefs, dissertations and theses, think tank materials, white papers, etc. They will become familiar with the life-cycle of legal scholarship and with the roles played by academic blogs, workshops, conferences, and preprint repositories. They will gain an appreciation for the interdisciplinary nature of scholarship and exposure to the research tools used for scholarly work in related disciplines. They will learn to find and make use of empirical research and statistical resources. Finally, students will practice strategies for developing a comprehensive literature review, with particular focus on methods of citation tracing, the application of controlled vocabularies, and the proper use of modern research tools that benefit from algorithms, AI, and machine learning processes. Prerequisite(s): Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing I and II. Graded.