Take the law into your own hands

Do you have legal questions at home or work or as part of law-related coursework? Legal Research is the go-to book when you need the right answers fast. You'll learn simple research methods and standard legal writing styles that will help you quickly and efficiently:

• locate statutes, regulations, and case law


• ensure your research is current, and


• organize results into a legal memorandum for school, work, or court.

Completely modernized for the 20th edition, Legal Research covers both traditional research approaches and techniques for answering legal questions online. The examples and easy-to-understand instructions will help you master essential legal research tools in a snap, including:

• legal encyclopedias, periodicals, and treatises


• annotated and unannotated codes and statutes


• published state and federal court cases


• case digests and Shepard's Citations, and


• online search engines, free legal websites, and blogs.

Importantly, you'll also learn to narrow your results so you won't drown in an information flood when researching reliable, user-friendly online websites or in the local law library stacks.

The Fourth Edition of Examples & Explanations: Legal Writing explains what many professors consider to be effective writing, following the organization of typical first-year legal writing courses, and provides concrete examples for students to test their understanding of key legal writing concepts. Each chapter includes a checklist that can be easily transformed into a grading grid as well as chapter-by-chapter vocabulary that integrates your classroom instruction with these examples. This book--whether the entire book, selected chapters, or subsets of chapters--can accompany any legal writing textbook or materials you provide for your students.

A favorite classroom prep tool of successful students that is often recommended by professors, the Examples& Explanations series has been ranked the most popular study aid among law students because it is equally as helpful from the first day of class through the final exam.

New to the Fourth Edition:

• New chapters on common law and on writing conclusion sections in persuasive documents
• Revised and updated with legal writing professors in mind, including revisions that work whether assigning single chapters or the entire book
• New common law assignments with many added examples and explanations throughout the book

Professors and students will benefit from:

• Understanding how the writing students do in law school (and law practice) differs from what they did in college
• Professors knowing the right way to use examples, although they may hesitate to give examples
• Learning how to practice revising and rewriting--skills that are necessary to all good writing
• Demonstrations of how to self-evaluate, self-explain, and self-test
• Having the tools to continue to learn about legal writing after formal instruction ends

This third edition of Research Methods for Law offers students in a range of disciplines - law, sociology, psychology, criminology, forensic science, social-legal studies and social welfare - an advanced introduction to research methods in an accessible and grounded way. As well as covering theoretical, comparative and interdisciplinary methods, the book breaks new ground by offering a focus on topics of contemporary and developing concerns in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, BRICS, Continental Legal Systems, Islamic Law, Gender, Race and the 'Virtual World'. The expert contributors draw on their vast experience in teaching and research to encourage students and provide sure pathways for their own enterprises with technical competence and adherence to ethical standards.

This third edition of Research Methods for Law offers students in a range of disciplines - law, sociology, psychology, criminology, forensic science, social-legal studies and social welfare - an advanced introduction to research methods in an accessible and grounded way. As well as covering theoretical, comparative and interdisciplinary methods, the book breaks new ground by offering a focus on topics of contemporary and developing concerns in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, BRICS, Continental Legal Systems, Islamic Law, Gender, Race and the 'Virtual World'. The expert contributors draw on their vast experience in teaching and research to encourage students and provide sure pathways for their own enterprises with technical competence and adherence to ethical standards.

Whether for self-representation, to be an informed consumer of legal services, or to learn the U.S. legal system, more people than ever are using the library to obtain legal information and legal research advice. The new edition of Finding the Answers to Legal Questions is a comprehensive guide to help librarians confidently assist users in finding the legal information they need. Newly revised and updated, this timely, clearly organized, and easy-to-use resource is packed with guidance to help librarians answer questions that span the gamut of the law. An ideal book for practicing librarians looking to better serve users' legal needs, as well as for students preparing for careers as librarians, it provides

• an overview of fundamental legal information, including the basic structure of the U.S. legal system and primary law;
• how-to instructions for finding primary law in print sources, free websites, and pay-for-view databases;
• information on how to evaluate the trustworthiness of online and print resources;
• tips for conducting a legal reference interview;
• guidance for handling common legal questions, such as lawsuits, family law, landlord-tenant disputes, wills and estate planning, debt, bankruptcy, employment, and criminal law; and
• advice on how to build a basic legal reference collection.

This book will help librarians connect users to the most accurate, up-to-date legal information.

Introduction to U.S. Law, Policy, and Research--An Environmental Perspective offers an interdisciplinary experiential study of environmental law unlike the typical environmental law textbook. Expanding beyond case studies, statutes, and rules, this book provides a unique, process-oriented introduction to law and legal research and its use in environmental policy and decision-making. Covering the origins and structure of the U.S. legal system, Introduction to U.S. Law, Policy, and Research--An Environmental Perspective places special emphasis on the litigation process and specific cases that explain common law and toxic torts, environmental administrative law, and environmental regulation through application and testing of statutory law in the courts.

In an effort to help students develop legal literacy as well as stronger research and writing skills, authors Dana Neacşu and Peter Bower provide the hands-on use of online legal resources, readings of opinions, statutes, and casebooks. Students will leave the text with a thorough understanding of:

• The origins, history, and structure of the U.S. legal system and how they apply to environmental policy and decision-making.
• The structure of the U.S. court system, including the importance of precedent and roles of the Constitution and Supreme Court.
• How to use legal research tools to find good law by analyzing precedent, find cases that determine the meaning of statute, and more.
• How to read, and brief cases, understand the structure of case-law writing etc.
• And much more

Complete with an interactive online resource to help guide students through the course material, provide in-depth case studies, and engage students in further reading, Introduction to U.S. Law, Policy, and Research--An Environmental Perspective is a must-read for those looking to understand the basis of U.S. law and environmental policy.

The book unearths the way in which thinking process is to be streamlined in research; the manner in which a theme is to be built, and the paths through which notions of objectivity, feminism, ethics and purposive character of knowledge are to be internalized in legal research. The proposed book has five components. The first part deals with general matters such as meaning, evolution, and scope of legal research; systematization of thinking process; objectivity and ethics in legal research; and building a theme through an appropriate research plan. The second part engages with various ways through which doctrinal legal research can be conducted. This includes doctrinal, analytical, historical, comparative, and philosophical methods of conducting legal research. Part Three unravels discussion on non-doctrinal legal research by highlighting empirical, qualitative, and quantitative methods of legal research. It also catalogues the tools employed for non-doctrinal legal research and explains the method of using them. Part four takes to the fields where combination of doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal research can be attempted. Multi-method legal research, policy research, action research, and feminist legal research occupy this field. A point emphasized in various chapters is that legal research cannot afford to have compartmentalization of methods, and that the researcher has to be eclectic and inter-disciplinary in his approach. The final part reflects over the steps involved in research-based critical legal writing, as distinct from client-related or norm-creating legal writing.

Research Methods for Empirical Legal Studies gives an overview of methods for empirical legal research. It begins with general methodological issues, such as reliability and validity as well as research ethics. Subsequently, the book discusses data collection: sampling, interviewing, observation and survey instruments, and research design. Then, data analysis methods are introduced, for qualitative as well as quantitative data. In separate chapters, statistical testing and multivariate analysis are explained. Each chapter ends with questions on key issues. Using a minimum of formulas, the text gives numerous examples to facilitate comprehension of the various methodologies. A final chapter showcases three worked examples on labour law, liability law and sentencing, that together cover the scope of qualitative and quantitative research methods for empirical legal studies. Catrien Bijleveld is a research methodologist and a lawyer. She is professor of Research Methods in Empirical Legal Studies and Criminology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Written by a practicing litigation attorney with 30 years experience, basic guide to the fundamentals of legal writing style, techniques and substance commonly used in both state and federal court to produce effective and compelling work product, including pleadings motions and briefs. Samples and forms included. A good primer for paralegals, law students, young attorneys, as well as experienced attorneys.

Cyber space is used as a platform to commit many criminal activities. Due to the novel characteristics of the new cyberspace such as anonymity, inter-connectivity, ambiguity, ability to shrink time and space and expansion, crimes in it create a special process of victimisation and a special category of victims. It is in this background the readers are invited to read through the pages of this study. This study also has made an attempt to find out what happens to the victims of cybercrime in terms of impact and reporting behaviour.

Tienes un cliente que te trae un problema legal y no sabes por d nde empezar a trabajarlo? Te acaban de notificar sobre una demanda y no tienes el tiempo suficiente para completar la investigaci n? Eres asistente jur dico y necesitas hacer una investigaci n de emergencia? Cualquiera de estas situaciones puede romperte la cabeza.En La ingenier a de la investigaci n jur dica, aprender s c mo resolver el rompecabezas de tu investigaci n. Conocer s las siete piezas fundamentales que te ayudan a reducir las horas dedicadas a investigar, reducir gastos y demoras, y aumentar el tiempo disponible para atender m s clientes. Ser tu libro de referencia, que querr s tener siempre en tu oficina o despacho. De manera muy creativa te muestra una metodolog a pr ctica para lograr el xito en cualquier investigaci n.

For everyone from students, to lawyers, to legal scholars this book demystifies the processes of legal research, analysis, and writing from start to finish, providing readers with both a solid theoretical understanding and powerful applied practice skills. Learn both the how and the why of legal research; acquire powerful legal analytical skills; and learn how to translate your research findings into compelling presentations and winning arguments. This book provides the legal research, analysis, and writing skills you need for professional success. It strikes an optimal balance in theory and practice helping you to understand not just the how of legal research, but also the why for fuller comprehension of the process. Through interesting and compelling chapters and exercises you will learn about legal research methods and their application in practice. You will learn how to select and refine research topics and questions; how the legal/governance system functions in practice; where to find relevant facts and laws; how to analyze and interpret your findings; how to build strong evidence and arguments; how to improve your legal writing skills; and how to put these skills to work in legal practice, publications, and presentations to maximize your success. For everyone who may benefit from improving their legal research, analysis, and writing skills, this is an ideal research textbook, class supplement, and reference book.

The basics of legal research, analysis, and writing in a practical, relevant approach

Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing gives students the essential knowledge and tools they need to research and analyze a legal problem and communicate the results in diverse forms of legal memoranda. Covering both traditional and free Internet research, the book's practical, relevant approach provides a number of outstanding teaching and learning aids, among them short memos with hypothetical factual situations for students to research, research and writing exercises and assignments, writing examples and exercises, online research exercises, citation exercises, numerous sample pages and screenshots, legal research problems with answers, checklists for research and writing, and an Instructor's Manual. The Sixth Edition updates and expands many of the examples and exercises used throughout the text to give students the latest information available.

Is the death penalty a more effective deterrent than lengthy prison sentences? Does a judge's gender influence their decisions? Do independent judiciaries promote economic freedom? Answering such questions requires empirical evidence, and arguments based on empirical research have become an everyday part of legal practice, scholarship, and teaching. In litigation judges are confronted with empirical evidence in cases ranging from bankruptcy and taxation to criminal law and environmental infringement. In academia researchers are increasingly turning to sophisticated empirical methods to assess and challenge fundamental assumptions about the law. As empirical methods impact on traditional legal scholarship and practice, new forms of education are needed for today's lawyers. All lawyers asked to present or assess empirical arguments need to understand the fundamental principles of social science methodology that underpin sound empirical research. An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research introduces that methodology in a legal context, explaining how empirical analysis can inform legal arguments; how lawyers can set about framing empirical questions, conducting empirical research, analysing data, and presenting or evaluating the results. The fundamentals of understanding quantitative and qualitative data, statistical models, and the structure of empirical arguments are explained in a way accessible to lawyers with or without formal training in statistics. Written by two of the world's leading experts in empirical legal analysis, drawing on years of experience in training lawyers in empirical methods, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research will be an invaluable primer for all students, academics, or practising lawyers coming to empirical research - whether they are embarking themselves on an empirical research project, or engaging with empirical arguments in their field of study, research, or practice.

Is the death penalty a more effective deterrent than lengthy prison sentences? Does a judge's gender influence their decisions? Do independent judiciaries promote economic freedom? Answering such questions requires empirical evidence, and arguments based on empirical research have become an everyday part of legal practice, scholarship, and teaching. In litigation judges are confronted with empirical evidence in cases ranging from bankruptcy and taxation to criminal law and environmental infringement. In academia researchers are increasingly turning to sophisticated empirical methods to assess and challenge fundamental assumptions about the law.

As empirical methods impact on traditional legal scholarship and practice, new forms of education are needed for today's lawyers. All lawyers asked to present or assess empirical arguments need to understand the fundamental principles of social science methodology that underpin sound empirical research. An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research introduces that methodology in a legal context, explaining how empirical analysis can inform legal arguments; how lawyers can set about framing empirical questions, conducting empirical research, analyzing data, and presenting or evaluating the results. The fundamentals of understanding quantitative and qualitative data, statistical models, and the structure of empirical arguments are explained in a way accessible to lawyers with or without formal training in statistics.

Written by two of the world's leading experts in empirical legal analysis, drawing on years of experience in training lawyers in empirical methods, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research will be an invaluable primer for all students, academics, or practicing lawyers coming to empirical research - whether they are embarking themselves on an empirical research project, or engaging with empirical arguments in their field of study, research, or practice.

The study of legal history has a broad application that extends well beyond the interests of legal historians. An attorney arguing a case today may need to cite cases that are decades or even centuries old, and historians studying political or cultural history often encounter legal issues that affect their main subjects. Both groups need to understand the laws and legal practices of past eras. This essential reference is intended for the many nonspecialists who need to enter this arcane and often tricky area of research.

After years of teaching law courses to undergraduate, graduate, and law students, Michael Evan Gold has come to believe that the traditional way of teaching - analysis, explanation, and example - is superior to the Socratic Method for students at the outset of their studies.

In courses taught Socratically, even the most gifted students can struggle, and many others are lost in a fog for months. Gold offers a meta approach to teaching legal reasoning, bringing the process of argumentation to the fore.

Using examples both from the law and from daily life, Gold's book will help undergraduates and first-year law students to understand legal discourse. The book analyzes and illustrates the principles of legal reasoning, such as logical deduction, analogies and distinctions, and application of law to fact, and even solves the mystery of how to spot an issue.

In Gold's experience, students who understand the principles of analytical thinking are able to understand arguments, to evaluate and reply to them, and ultimately to construct sound arguments of their own.

A guide for attorneys to the best free legal sites, and how to effectively use them

The internet is one of the most powerful tools a lawyer can use, and it becomes more indispensable each day. Legal information used in practicing law - cases, statutes, regulations, and more, even foreign and international sources - are available for free if you just know where to look. No monthly charges, download fees, or subscriptions needed. For many sources of law all you need are an internet connection... and this book to direct you to the best sites and to help you use them

Revised Forward (Oct 2016) This book, citing a broad range of journalism, medical, legal, sociological and historical documents, and case law, traces an arc of bigotry in U.S. Supreme Court decisions, using similar language and reasoning, extending from slavery to eugenic sterilization to the death penalty to the treatment of prisoners to mental health. It demonstrates the High Court's often callous disregard for human life and liberty, in rendering prejudiced and flawed decisions with disastrous consequences to innocent and harmless people, which it then never bothers to review. It claims stare decisis for such decisions with pope-like infallibility. For example, the 1927 Buck v. Bell eugenic sterilization decision, never overturned, forms the basis in both case law and procedure for modern mental health law and courts. In the case of the Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act, the Court accepted a defense attorney chosen from and by the prosecution, who apparently never called a witness or uttered an objection, the entire weight of expert witnesses on the side of the State, damning testimony by at least one expert witness who never examined Ms. Buck, and hearsay as proof. The Chief Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, justified the decision with the famous comment, three generations of imbeciles is enough. Hitler liked the Virginia Sterilization Act so much, he passed one just like it, almost verbatim, and used it to start the Holocaust. In the nearly 50 years following this decision, up into the 1970s, U.S. States sterilized over 60,000 U.S. citizens, mostly poor and colored, often without their knowledge or consent. As one white delivery doctor put it in about 1972, before sterilizing a Sri Lankan immigrant over her objections, There are too many colored babies already. The entire Buck v. Bell case may have fallen apart, if any Justice anywhere along the line had asked the simple question, So, how well did she do in school? Not only was Ms. Carrie Buck, whose illegitimate pregnancy followed rape by a member of her foster family, listed as a good student, her daughter, the third of three alleged generations of imbeciles, made the honor roll. Ms. Buck's sister was also sterilized without her knowledge or consent, merely for sharing the same blood. The High Court never asked that question, never mind the impacts of its decision. In the 1942 Skinner v. Oklahoma case, repeated the three generations of imbeciles argument, without ever having asked or discovered the school grades of two of those generations. As a consequence of its later mental health decisions, sometimes based upon deeply flawed and prejudiced expert witnesses, as in Barefoot v. Estelle, 1983, it granted psychiatric hospitals a legal indulgence to seduce and drag innocent and harmless people in, literally off the street, to drain their medical insurance with false involuntary commitments. This book traces that language and reasoning all the way back to the 1856 Dred Scott slavery decision, which stated that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. In other words, for either his own good or the good of his master, as others have been sterilized or committed to mental hospitals. So long as profiling remains acceptable for involuntary mental traumas and conditions, it will also be applied to gender and race. So long as this language and reasoning holds sway in the highest court in the land, so long as legal precedent and procedure can be based upon junk science, so long as civil liberties may be stripped from the harmless and innocent for the good of society --- THEN BIGOTRY CAN NEVER DIE - Don Baker, October 3, 2016 Review by A.J. Moore (Aug 2016): http: //www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/aug_16.htm#moore

This book is an insider's guide to the art of legal research. Using a hands-on approach, BLR provides students with an easy and approachable way to learn about the processes, materials, and background of legal research. It explains the many methods of legal research in a simple and straightforward manner and language. This text is essential for all law office personnel and paralegal professionals.

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