- Legal Research in a Nutshell ("Nutshell"):
ch. 1 & 2
Discovering Westlaw, 8th ed. ("DW"): skim ch. 2; read ch. 4-6
Course description and requirements.
Case reports; nature of the appellate decision in general and its components; development of law reporting and modern forms of publication. Types of reports: official and unofficial; state and federal reports; annotated and topical reporters.
The U.S. Supreme Court and its reports: the early nominative reporters; the quick text of decisions; slip decisions to advance sheet to bound volume; the official U.S. Reports, and the unofficial Supreme Court Reporter and Lawyers Edition. Lower federal court reports, including Federal Reporter, Federal Supplementand Federal Rules Decisions. State court reports: official and unofficial, including West regional reporters.
Introduction to LEXIS, WESTLAW, and the Internet.
Feb.3:
Nutshell: ch. 3 & 4
DW: ch. 7
How to formulate research strategies for using legal encyclopedias, including Am. Jur. 2d, Corpus Juris Secundum, and state encyclopedias; indexing systems, organization, special features, and updating of encyclopedias; interrelations between Am. Jur. 2d and A.L.R., and between C.J.S. and the West Digests.
Annotated reporters: American Law Reports ("A.L.R."), including access to the A.L.R. system by case, index, digests, and statutory tables; analysis of typical annotation; research value of the annotation.
The National Reporter System: its rationale and components; headnotes and key-number indexing and digesting.
Case digests: The West digest system, from the advance sheet key number digest to the general digest to the decennials, etc.; federal, regional, and state digests; access to digests via table of cases, defendant-plaintiff table, title index, and descriptive word index; locating parallel citations; words and phrases; coordinating use of digests with other search tools.
Computerized search services for case law: LEXIS, WESTLAW, CD-ROM, and Internet
Feb. 10
- Nutshell: review ch. 3; read ch. 5
DW: ch. 3, 8
Case digests (concluded)
Shepard's Citations: The importance of Shepardizing; how to do a complete Shepard's search; using Shepard's to determine parallel citations, and the history and treatment of the cited case; symbols illustrating history and treatment; use of reporter headnotes to facilitate Shepardizing; dual purpose of citators to verify status and authority of case and to develop further research leads; difference in coverage between Shepard's for official reports and unofficial reports.
Feb. 17
- Nutshell: ch. 6
DW: ch. 9
Article: Desert, "Westlaw's Natural v. Boolean Searching: A Performance Study," 85 Law Library Journal 713 (on Web page)
Types of legislation: constitutions; public and private acts; resolutions.
Forms of federal legislation: Slip laws; Statutes at Large; U.S.C.C.A.N; Revised Statutes; U.S. Code; the elements, uses, features, and advantages of annotated codes (U.S.C.A. and U.S.C.S.); the authoritative text of federal statutes.
Working with statutes: statutory indexes and tables; access to statutory material though descriptive word and title indexes, and popular names tables.
Shepardizing statutory material: history of legislation and judicial treatment; symbols indicating history and treatment; secondary research leads from statutory citators.
Federal Legislative History
- Nutshell: ch. 7
Legislative history: ambiguity and problems of statutory interpretation; determination of legislative intent; steps in the legislative process and main documentary sources: bills, databases, committee reports, hearings, Presidential messages; use of status tables for determining current status and for tracing history retrospectively; compiled legislative histories; micro facsimile series; federal sources: the Congressional Record; Daily Digest; Calendars; Digests of Public Bills; U.S.C.C.A.N.; Congressional Quarterly; CCH Congressional Index; Congressional Index Service; the Serial Set and the C.I.S. indexes.
Researching constitutional and legislative history by using computerized sources, general databases, and searching in topical databases on LEXIS and WESTLAW.
- Nutshell: review ch. 3, § 3; ch. 6, § 5
DW: ch. 8
Articles: Dabney, "The Curse of Thamus: An Analysis of Full Text Legal Document Retrieval," 78 Law Library Journal 5
Dabney, "A Reply to West Publishing Company and Mead Data Central on The Curse of Thamus 78 Law Library Journal 349
Outline:
Shepard's and Auto-Cite on LEXIS and KeyCite on WESTLAW.
Mar. 10
- Nutshell: ch. 8
The growth of administrative agencies and the development of the administrative process; adjudication, rule-making, and enforcement functions; the literature of administrative law: decisional and legislative.
Forms of publication: official and unofficial administrative reports; slip decisions and preliminary forms; the Code of Federal Regulations ("C.F.R.") and the Federal Register; official and unofficial indexes to C.F.R.
Updating administrative regulation using the monthly List of C.F.R. Sections Affected and its counterparts in the Federal Register; Shepard's citators for administrative law.
Using computer services to research Administrative Law: Federal Register, C.F.R., and topical databases on LEXIS and WESTLAW.
Mar. 17
Mar. 24
- Nutshell: ch. 9 & 11; ch. 10, §§ 1-3
DW: ch. 11
The nature of authority in secondary materials; evaluation of secondary sources; judicial treatment.
Treatises: scholarly treatises, hornbooks, monographs, dissertations, casebooks, and practitioners' guides; finding tools for monographic sources; Restatements of the Law; computer access to secondary materials.
Legal periodicals: Indexes to periodical literature; legal newspapers and newsletters; computer access to periodicals.
Use of looseleaf services as a coordinated source of administrative, legislative, and judicial materials; forms of organization and methods of approach; variety of indexes; topical reporters as spinoffs.
March 31
- Nutshell: ch. 10, §§ 4-5
Literature of procedural law; types of sources (rules of practice, practice acts, interpretive decisions); practice books.
Federal court rules: texts of rules; judicial interpretations; Shepardizing; secondary sources; state court rules.
Forms and formbooks: generalized and specialized sources; annotated forms; computer-assisted drafting.
April 7
- Nutshell: ch. 12 & 13
International law sources; the traditional law of nations; treaty collections; the literature ofinternational organizations and tribunals; the League of Nations, the U.N., and their affiliated organizations; the P.C.I.J and I.C.J. regional organizations; secondary literature, including commentaries, treatises, periodicals, and digests; bibliographic guides to international law and foreign relations; research procedures and strategy.
U.S. treaties and U.S. practice in international law.
April 14
- Nutshell: review ch. 6, §§ 3, 7-8
DW: ch. 12
Historical background and sources of the U.S. Constitution; federal constitutional research; Shepardizing constitutional provisions; secondary sources; legislative history of constitutional provisions; constitutional research using computers.
State constitutions: texts, judicial interpretation; Shepardizing; secondary sources; legislative history; historical research.
Local law and government; city charters and codes of ordinances; N.I.M.L.O and Municipal Yearbook; finding ordinances; Shepardizing ordinances; secondary materials.
April 21
- No Reading
Teams compete for fun and prizes--mostly fun; game-show format with questions on all aspects of legal research.
April 28
- Nutshell: As appropriate
Students may choose to attend any one of three sessions devoted to the topics listed above.
May 5
- No Reading
Taking notes in the law library: The "Two-Pad" Method; when to stop researching; how to move easily from finishing research to finishing the written product.
Things to do before you get to your job; survival tips for new lawyers.
