Legal Research

What is legal research all about? There are more steps than you may think, and in this course you will discover all of them. You will explore how the skills of legal research and legal analysis fit into every lawyer's work. You'll then examine the particular features of legal information that make it unique and applicable in specific legal situations, including legal jurisdictions and the implications of where legal information originates.

By exploring terminology specific to legal information, such as primary sources of legal information or legal authority and secondary legal information, you will identify how these kinds of legal information relate to each other. You'll also consider how a lawyer would choose to use different information sources and why. Through this knowledge, you'll be able to understand the valuable skill of strategizing legal research as well as the way lawyers develop efficient legal research strategies to achieve accurate results while staying within timelines and budgets.

The world is filled with misinformation, making it difficult to determine what is useful and what isn't. In this course, you will develop skills to help you assess what is valuable legal information. You'll examine how to find credible, reliable legal resources, even on the open web, and you'll develop skills to recognize certain hallmarks of reliable, authoritative information. You'll also discover ways to distinguish these viable sources from lower-quality information and identify the unique advantages of specialized legal research databases.

Throughout this course, you will gain a deeper understanding of the influence that artificial intelligence has on legal information by analyzing specific sources that are useful in explaining legal terminology and discussing legal subjects for court rulings and legislation. You'll also explore the ways that lawyers and researchers can safely use knowledge management systems while recognizing their limitations, and you'll consider the unique advantages of subscription legal resources that lawyers often use.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Creating a Legal Research Strategy

Legal research often begins by taking a step back. Lawyers know it's important to not rush in but to first identify the specific question they need to address before gathering the relevant information. In this course, you will explore the specific strategies and processes a lawyer uses to solve legal problems in practice. By studying the ways in which a lawyer leverages their legal expertise to identify the facts salient to a client's problem, you'll discover how the lawyer is able to identify specific legal issues that emerge, along with which steps to take.

You will also examine the preliminary information a lawyer will establish before beginning their legal research, and you'll have the opportunity to see and use a legal research planning tool. You'll investigate how a lawyer can ensure that they're not missing important issues or sources of legal information while they navigate large, complex webs of legal information efficiently and without repetition. Finally, you'll delve into how a lawyer concludes the research process for a given problem.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Creating a Legal Research Strategy
• Selecting Legal Research Sources