Law Library Classes
Law Library Classes
U.S. Legal Research | Law 7454
Fall 2024 | Professor: Margaret Purdy
The course is designed to prepare law students for research in practice, clerkships, and legal scholarship. Students will evaluate legal research sources and use them effectively, expand skills in primary and secondary U.S. legal sources, become aware of non-legal information resources that could be useful to legal practice, and get an overview of public international law and foreign legal research. Since learning legal research requires a hands-on approach, students are required to complete assignments and in-class exercises. This course will emphasize cost-effective research, including print and internet sources. The topics covered in this survey course will vary from year to year and may include immigration law, tax law, business law, environmental law and cultural property law among others.
Legal Research Workshop | Law 7678
Spring 2024 | Professor: Scott Akehurst-Moore
Summer 2024 | Professor: Craig Eastland
Fall 2024 | Professor: Scott Akehurst-Moore
Spring 2025 | Professor: Margaret Purdy
This course assists students in developing and executing research plans for writing projects. Students must identify an appropriate project early in the course; the project may be one that the student creates specifically for the course, or it could be one undertaken for a law review note, or a seminar or independent study in which the student is concurrently enrolled. The workshop will include readings, lectures, demonstrations, and in-class and homework exercises, as well as peer and instructor feedback focused on research strategies. Students will periodically present their research strategies and results for their writing projects. This course is graded with honorifics.
Scholarly Legal Writing (2 credits) | Law 7933
Spring 2024 | Professor: Sharon Persons
Fall 2024 | Professor: Sharon Persons
Spring 2025 | Professor: Sharon Persons
Fall 2025 | Sharon Persons
Introduces students to basic concepts and principles of scholarly legal writing. Students will produce a piece of scholarly legal writing on a complex legal issue of their choice. The scholarly writing is expected to meet the standards of the upper-level rigorous writing requirement and be of publishable quality, analyzing an original legal issue.
International and Foreign Legal Research | Law 7569
Summer 2024 | Professor: Scott Akehurst-Moore
The Northeastern University Law Review publishes legal scholarship in its flagship print journal and online platforms. In addition to performing standard staff duties, a staff member may elect to register to develop a student note. Notes shall meet the standards of the upper-level rigorous writing requirement and be of publishable quality, analyzing an original legal issue. Note writers work under supervision of the managing editor and faculty advisor to write and revise an idea developed in LAW 7678 or another setting. Top student Notes may be selected for publication. This course is graded on a Credit/No Credit basis.
Legal & Interdisciplinary Research | Law TBD
Spring 2024 | Professor: Margaret Purdy
Summer 2025 | Professor: Craig Eastland
It is axiomatic that law "by its very nature, must be interdisciplinary." Alan M. Dershowitz, The Interdisciplinary Study of Law, 1 NW. Interdisc. L. Rev. 3 (2008). Law practice requires the incorporation of processes, knowledge, methods, and jargon, from other disciplines. Practicing lawyers, therefore, must come to grips with bodies of knowledge beyond the law. From using government data to prove discrimination, to using financial information to structure M&A agreements, lawyers must be able to find and use a wide range of types of information.
Legal & Interdisciplinary Research will explore selected advanced legal research topics and introduce some of the most common non-legal bodies of research (and associated research tools) used by practicing lawyers.
LRW for LLMS: Prepare for Coop | Law 6315
Spring 2024 | Professor: Sharon Persons
This class is available to graduates of law programs outside the United States as an introduction to the practical application of U.S. legal discourse and legal research in the workplace. Offers students an opportunity to apply what they have learned about U.S. legal writing and research to the types of tasks that they will be called upon to complete during their co-op internship work experience.
