Researching The Law

"Textbook for the first-year legal research course that offers a concise, accessible approach to teaching legal research"--

Buy anew versionof this Connected Casebook and receiveaccessto theonline e-book, practice questionsfrom your favorite study aids, and anoutline toolon CasebookConnect, the all in one learning solution for law school students. CasebookConnect offers you what you need most to be successful in your law school classes - portability, meaningful feedback, and greater efficiency.This looseleaf version of the Connected Casebook does not come with a binder. Concise new title by the top author in legal research. Focuses onpre-and post-search analysis for effectively filtering vast amounts of material. Teaches students how to identify the most pertinent and authoritative information to solve a legal problem. Features: Concise, reasonably priced new title from the top legal research author. Approaches legal research as a filtering process to identify the most pertinent and authoritative information from vast search results. Part I: Explains how to define a research question; pre-filter content before beginning a search; conduct research; and establish post-search criteria for filtering results. Part II: Describes essential features of individual sources of authority and search strategies unique to each source. Part III: Contains research flowcharts to help students plan research strategy for different types of research projects. Contains all information students need to learn fundamental principles of legal research. Can also be used to complement other texts and classroom materials. Not simply a shorter version of Basic Legal Research. Looks at research as a process of filtering the available information, rather than as a process that requires first choosing the right source of authority to solve a legal problem. CasebookConnectfeatures: ONLINE E-BOOK Law school comes with a lot of reading, so access your enhanced e-book anytime, anywhere to keep up with your coursework. Highlight, take notes in the margins, and search the full text to quickly find coverage of legal topics. PRACTICE QUESTIONS Quiz yourself before class and prep for your exam in the Study Center. Practice questions fromExamples & Explanations, Emanuel Law Outlines, Emanuel Law in a Flashflashcards, and other best-selling study aid series help you study for exams while tracking your strengths and weaknesses to help optimize your study time. OUTLINE TOOL Most professors will tell you that starting your outline early is key to being successful in your law school classes. The Outline Tool automatically populates your notes and highlights from the e-book into an editable format to accelerate your outline creation and increase study time later in the semester.

"Textbook for a first-year law school legal research course that offers a concise, accessible approach to teaching legal research"--

Legal Research: Take the law into your own hands Do you have legal questions at home, at work, or as part of law-related course work? Legal Research provides everything you need, laying out easy-to-follow research methods that will help you find the right answers. Find out how to: locate and understand statutes, regulations, and cases make sure your research is 100% up to date, and organize your research results into a memorandum of law for use at school, at work, or in court. Completely updated for the 19th edition, Legal Research shows you how to find statutes, cases, background information, and answers to specific legal questions online. Even more important, you’ll be guided to the most reliable and user-friendly sites, so you won’t drown in an information flood. Lots of examples and easy-to-understand instructions teach you how to master all the basic legal research tools, including: online search engines reliable free legal websites legal encyclopedias, periodicals, and treatises annotated legal codes and statutes published reports of state and federal court cases case digests and Shepard’s Citations, and the best legal blogs.

This newly updated law school textbook and course reference is designed specifically for advanced legal research classes and for upper-level students who want to achieve a better understanding of how to use the sources of legal information that they learned about in their introductory courses. It provides in-depth guidance through the research process, advice on format selection, and detail about the tools and techniques needed to function as skilled legal researchers. Up-to-date discussion of all media is fully integrated throughout, focusing on the types of information the researcher needs, rather than on descriptions of particular information products.

A basic legal research guide for new law students.

A time-tested, proven introduction, The Process of Legal Research acquaints students with all of the sources and relevant vocabulary and shows how each source works, how to combine sources into a cohesive research process, and how to resolve legal problems through effective techniques. Extensive illustrations and examples quickly engage students in actual research problems, as the text carefully demonstrates how research and writing are interrelated processes. The authors focus on teaching the best research practices, illustrating how to choose the appropriate source and media for each type of problem. Electronic research is completely integrated into the text. Students are given solid guidance for every type of situation, learning when and how to choose between paper and electronic research, and how the choice among different media can result in different access means, scope, and currency of materials. The Process of Legal Research offers extensive, well-researched problems sets, ideal for large programs that need plenty of exercise options for their students. Pages with problems sets are perforated for easy use. The Eighth Edition finds a sharper focus on the basics, asking and answering the questions, "What are the various forms of legal authority?" and "How does each contribute to resolving a client's legal problem?" A greater emphasis on how to choose the optimal research options for various authorities includes a mix of print and online as well as public and commercial resources. Each chapter includes a table of optimal research options. The Eighth Edition skillfully interweaves smaller employment law problems faced by a firm throughout the text, rather than the single mega-problem of previous editions, and new flow-chart style charts illuminate much of the denser text. Citations are covered in citation boxes, reflecting both the Bluebook and ALWD. In a leaner writing style designed appeal to modern students, the Eighth Edition confronts some of the most current hot topics, such as how people think about research today and what firms find wanting in new lawyers research abilities. Hallmark features: Provides a complete introduction to the process of legal research the sources and vocabulary of legal research how each source works how to combine sources into a research process how to resolve legal problems through effective research techniques Extensive illustrations and examples of actual research problems Teaches the best research practices how to choose the appropriate source and media for various types of problems Integrates electronic research discusses when and how to choose between paper and electronic research shows how the choice among media results in different access means, scope, and currency of materials Includes extensive, well-researched problems sets

Until quite recently questions about methodology in legal research have been largely confined to understanding the role of doctrinal research as a scholarly discipline. In turn this has involved asking questions not only about coverage but, fundamentally, questions about the identity of the discipline. Is it (mainly) descriptive, hermeneutical, or normative? Should it also be explanatory? Legal scholarship has been torn between, on the one hand, grasping the expanding reality of law and its context, and, on the other, reducing this complex whole to manageable proportions. The purely internal analysis of a legal system, isolated from any societal context, remains an option, and is still seen in the approach of the French academy, but as law aims at ordering society and influencing human behaviour, this approach is felt by many scholars to be insufficient. Consequently many attempts have been made to conceive legal research differently. Social scientific and comparative approaches have proven fruitful. However, does the introduction of other approaches leave merely a residue of 'legal doctrine', to which pockets of social sciences can be added, or should legal doctrine be merged with the social sciences? What would such a broad interdisciplinary field look like and what would its methods be? This book is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

Researching and tracing information is an essential skill that students need to master if they want to succeed both in their legal studies and in their future careers. A practical guide to effective legal research, this new edition presents the information in a step-by-step format leading students through the world of legal research from using a law library to searching online

A comprehensive companion to your legal research coursebook, Basic Legal Research Workbook provides a well-chosen range of exercises and assignments to familiarize students with fundamental online and print research sources. Logically and intuitively organized, Basic Legal Research Workbook’s coverage mirrors the research sources studied in first-year Legal Research courses, including both online and print sources. Research exercises are presented at graduated levels of difficulty, from guided research to open research requiring more advanced research skills. Online research exercises progressively instruct students on the latest interface features of commonly-used databases. Print assignments cover multiple jurisdictions, reducing the demand on single library sources. New to the Fifth Edition: All exercises updated to include instructions for the latest research platforms Flexible exercises that can be completed online or in print Updated problem sets Inclusion of Student Learning Outcomes that support formative and summative student assessment Updated exercises that reflect the latest versions of Westlaw and Lexis Questions that introduce students to Bloomberg Law and the latest government websites (e.g., govinfo.gov) Professors and students will benefit from: Coverage that mirrors the research sources studied in first-year Legal Research courses, including both online and print sources A logical and intuitive organization Research exercises cover the scope and organization of research sources (emphasizing online but also including some print), review the research process, and reinforce students’ skills. Exercises are presented at graduated levels of difficulty, from guided research to open research requiring more advanced research skills Emphasis on online sources while maintaining coverage of key print resources for professors who teach print research. Online research exercises with progressively more complex questions to instruct students on the latest interface features of commonly-used databases Print assignments that can work in multiple jurisdictions, reducing the demand on single library sources Problem sets for all exercises An appealing and highly readable interior design.