Legal Research Explained provides a building-block approach to the fundamentals of legal research for paralegal students. The fundamentals of legal research for paralegal students. The text is divided into five separate sections, as follows: 1) conducting legal research using primary authorities; 2) conducting legal research using secondary authorities and other research aids; 3) electronic and computer resources; 4) legal citation form and validating authorities; and 5) "putting it all together," providing a final overview of the legal research process.
Although based on the legal research section of author Deborah Bouchoux's highly successful Legal Research and Writing for Paralegals, the material in Legal Research Explained is modified and condensed to fit a legal research-only course. All-new research assignments in each chapter give students practice with both conventional print resources and on-line sources. Helpful charts, diagrams, and sample pages from research resources help students understand complex topics. In addition, Practice Tips in each chapter offer realistic and helpful suggestions for workplace success and Ethics notes are included throughout the book.
Key Features:
- New research assignments
- New practice tips in several chapters
- Discussion of new titles added to the United States Code
- Discussion of new website GovInfo for free, official, and authenticated documents from all three branches of the government.
- Discussion of new sources for conducting research, such as the Law Review Commons (Chapter 6), which provides free access to thousands of law review articles.
- Discussion of new tools such as Lexis for Microsoft Office and Thomson Reuters's Drafting Assistant
- Extensively revised discussion of computer-assisted legal research in Chapter 8
- New information on practical concerns in citing to the Internet in Chapter 9
- Revamped discussion of citation form (Chapter 10)
- The information relating to Shepardizing using print volumes of Shepard's has been moved from Chapter 11 to its own back-of-the-book Appendix
- Information on new research management tools such as Zotero, Juris-M, and Evernote
- An in-depth Instructor's Manual includes an overview of the text, sample syllabi, tips on teaching strategies, chapter-by-chapter resource information, answer keys for all assignments, and a Test Bank.
