Legal Research: examples & Explanations

Examples & Explanations: Legal Research is designed to meet the needs of law students who have come to expect that they will instantly receive answers to their questions. Rather than cataloging sources or outlining processes, this text starts where today s law students are when they realize they have a research problem. By that time, their research problem is not locating sources, but knowing what to do with them.

The Legal Research E & E guides students through examples and explanations of the kinds of sources they ve found, using the context of interesting and entertaining real-world problems. The text helps students determine which sources are the most useful for the current project and which not; it leads students to understand how one source affects and relates to the others; and equally important it shows students how to write about the sources they have found.

Because this book covers the kinds of research projects faced not only by beginning law students but also by advanced students and even new lawyers, its value to its readers is long-lasting. Even experienced researchers will learn more about working with the difficult, as well as the easy, research questions that today are addressed by an array of sources. *

Contents

• Introduction

• Weight of authority

• Identifying, reading, understanding, and writing about legislation

• Legislation in action

• Identifying, reading, understanding, and writing about judicial opinions

• Judicial opinions in action

• Identifying, reading, understanding, and writing about regulations

• Regulations (and other administrative law auhorities) in action

• Ethos, credibility, and legal research

• Secondary sources

• Conclusion