Marquette to Host 2009 Central States Legal Writing Conference

As just reported on the Legal Writing Prof Blog, the law school will host this fall’s Central States Legal Writing Conference.  The conference planning committee (led by our wonderful Alison Julien) met last Friday, and I am already excited for the event.  The regional legal writing conferences tend to focus on ideas for improving our teaching, and the conference here next fall will especially emphasize reaching out to resources beyond the legal writing faculty–the librarians and other law school faculty.  The blurb from the Legal Writing Prof blog website:

[T]he 2009 Central States Regional LRW/Lawyering Skills Conference,”Climate Change: Alternative Sources of Energy in Legal Writing,” will be held on October 9-10 at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Central States is also planning a Scholars’ Forum, which will be held on October 9 in conjunction with the conference.  At the end of the Scholars’ Forum and just before the welcome reception for the conference, conference attendees will be able to participate in an hour-long discussion on getting published and giving effective presentations.

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What’s New in the Classroom: Fastcase

What’s new in the legal research classroom?   As was mentioned in previous posts, there is a new database, Fastcase, available to all Wisconsin bar members.   In the Advanced Legal Research classrooms this past semester students were introduced to Fastcase.  Now that it is available to all members of the Wisconsin bar, we plan to expand training on this cost-effective legal research tool.  The Fastcase database has already been reviewed by Leslie Behroozi and Elana Olson in a joint post.   I’d like to focus my comments on the Interactive Timeline feature of Fastcase.  This new feature will prove useful for spotting trends in the law, not only to practicing lawyers, but also to academics, including those interested in writing papers for publication.   

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What’s New in the Classroom: Legal Research in the Real World

The Advanced Legal Research courses at Marquette have a “real world” focus.  For my part, I have tried to select research problems for final projects and assignments that place students in real world practice situations. 

To the extent that I can, I avoid the “hunt and find” type research problems for which there is one right answer hidden somewhere.  The legal issues the students have to research sometimes, but do not always, have a straightforward answer. 

In the “real world,” legal research and legal writing go hand in hand.  Thus, in addition to their research plan and research log, the students must then submit a written product such as a letter or a memo summarizing their research results for a supervising attorney, a judge, a client, etc.  

This past semester I added a more detailed cost-effective research component than I had in the past.  In some of their research assignments students only had limited Lexis/Westlaw packages (like Westlaw PRO).  In order to completely and accurately respond to the research problem, the students had to come up with a cost-effective research strategy that involved using only a subsection of their current academic Lexis or Westlaw subscription in conjunction with the print materials in the library and the freely available online legal resources like PreCYdent, GPO Access, Thomas and the Cornell Legal Information Institute that we discussed in class.  The student response to my focus on the free legal research options has been largely positive.

This coming semester I plan to deliver research assignments in the variety of different formats students will encounter in practice.  This includes the delivery of research assignments through a larger case file, brief email messages that require further questions for clarification, longer written memos, and spoken conversations.  I look forward to the feedback I will get from my students after next semester.

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