law34-slo


Law 34 - Legal Research - slo

 

Upon successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:

1. Brief law cases in  including subject areas of the law from all of the other law classes in our paralegal program

2. Critically analyze and argue issues in case law, and learn the methods of finding and researching law cases.   see http://profj.us/leganotes

This includes the following:
1. Primary and Secondary Sources of the Law

2. Overview of legal research
3. Steps to take in Case Law Research
4. Intro to Basic Legal Citation
5. Statsky Carthwheel and developing "legal language"
6. Getting background information
7. Refining the statement of the "Legal Issue"
8. How to develop a legal argument
9. Finding constitutions, statutes, regulations, and ordinances
10. Improve your legal writing
11. Finding cases
12. Expand and update your legal research
13. How to write a legal memo - sample
14. Final Legal Writing and Research Paper

3. Prepare a final legal research and writing paper. See format of the paper at http://profjordan.pbworks.com/format . The final research paper will be in the form of a position or  argumentative paper. It will train the student in legal analysis, finding of law cases, and improving legal argumentation.  The paper will be graded by using the following grading rubric -
http://missionparalegal.pbworks.com/rubric-finalpaper

Students will read various law cases and write a case brief demonstrating their understanding and application of the essential facts and rules of law and legal principles of the case. see case brief rubric at http://missionparalegal.pbworks.com/briefing

Criteria: The “case brief” will achieve an “acceptable” or higher rating, and will be indicative of a paralegal who is competent to work in a law office, state agency or with the courts.

Students will read a court case and write a “case brief” using the FIRACT method of case briefing (“Facts, Issue, Rule, Application and Conclusion”).

The assessment will be evaluated using the following rating scale:

(4) – Superior - comprehensive, very accurate, analytical, sophisticated logic, incisive, persuasive discussion of the facts, issues, rules, rationale, holdings, applications, and conclusions (Facts, Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion, Take Home Mesage - "FIRACT" method)

(3) – Strong - generally convincing, sufficiently analytical and logical, covers well all of the parts of the FIRACT method for a case brief.

(2) – Acceptable – basic understanding, reasonable, unsophisticated but shows comprehension of the case and legal points, lacking mastery but still in control, limited scope, occasionally original, misses parts of the FIRACT method for a case brief.

(1) – Unacceptable - superficial, lacking understanding, non-academic, undigested, unfinished, missing the target, perfunctory, inappropriate to the assignment, poorly developed, does not follow FIRACT method for a case brief.

 

updated: 4/6/11