Legal Research Tools and Strategies

The primary goal of the Legal Research Tools and Strategies course is to familiarize first year students with the process of discovering, evaluating, critically analyzing, and applying sources of American legal authority used by lawyers to understand facts and resolve issues.  While much of the course necessarily focuses on students developing a comfortable facility for the discovery phase of the legal research process in which they learn to find law and legal commentary in its various publication formats, an equally important outcome of the course is to provide students with opportunities to evaluate, analyze and apply the legal authority they discover in the context of the legal matters they will be expected to handle as law students and lawyers.