On Teaching Advanced Legal Research
Legal Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 101, 2009
29 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009
Date Written: August 12, 2009
Abstract
This article addresses the issues faced by instructors in advanced legal research courses. Everyone teaching in this area must have a strategy for organizing the subject matter, drafting problems and assignments, constructing a syllabus, and must be able to plan and deliver a course designed to meet particular course goals. Most importantly, the instructor must give serious thought to the desired outcomes at which he or she aims. In this article, I have categorized outcome targets into three levels; competence, fluency and mastery. The instructor’s decisions about desired outcomes will have implications for all aspects of course design and delivery. The goal of this article is to identify and discuss these issues, and to provide a framework instructors can use when designing their own courses. Attached as appendices are specific examples of many of the kinds of materials discussed in the article, all drawn from material I have prepared for use in my advanced legal research classes.
This is a preprint of an article published in the Legal Reference Services Quarterly (c) 2009 Taylor & Francis; Legal Reference Services Quarterly is available online. An electronic version of the published article in 28 Legal Reference Service Quarterly 101 (2009) is available to LRSQ subscribers.
Keywords: ALR, Advanced Legal Research, evaluation, competency, fluency, mastery, syllabus
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