Featuring Deborah E. Bouchoux’s highly regarded assignments, examples, and building-block approach, Concise Guide to Legal Research and Writing, Fourth Edition continues to provide timely coverage of the essential research and writing skills used by today’s paralegals. Designed specifically for paralegal students, this is the ideal text for shorter legal research and writing courses. New to the Fourth Edition: New “Sidebar” feature in all research chapters provides quick tips showing how the material in that chapter applies to computer-assisted legal research systems, such as Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law. Discussion of GovInfo, which provides free public access to official and authenticated publications from all three branches of the federal government. Coverage of new tools used for cite-checking, including EVA and Bestlaw. Discussion of Westlaw Edge, Westlaw’s new research platform. Extensive new coverage of the increasing use of artificial intelligence in legal research and writing. Discussion of new sources that provide free public access to the law, including Harvard’s Caselaw Access Project, CourtListener, and RECAP Project. New sections on preparing email letters and email memoranda, including assignments. All new Research Questions and Internet Legal Research Assignments have been included for each chapter. Professors and students will benefit from: Concise, well-organized text, divided into six main sections: Section I discusses primary authorities Section II covers secondary sources Section III focuses on computer-assisted legal research using Lexis Advance, Westlaw, and the Internet Section IV covers citation form and how to ensure that these sources are still “good law” Section V provides an overview of the legal research process Section VI covers legal writing Pedagogy designed to enhance the accessibility of the material, including helpful charts and diagrams that synthesize complex topics, updated Practice Tips offering realistic and helpful suggestions for workplace success, and Ethics Alerts in every chapter. Targeted and ample exercises help students learn how to use a wide range of research sources. Tips on how to effectively use electronic resources are included throughout the text. Conscientious revision ensures that the book has the most up-to-date material, presented in a readable and accessible format.

A clear, well-organized text for the introductory legal research and writing course, designed specifically for paralegal students, Concise Guide to Legal Research and Writing Second Edition covers legal research and legal writing in a concise and pragmatic manner and is ideal for introductory, abbreviated, or online courses.

A clear, well-organized text for the introductory legal research and writing course, designed specifically for paralegal students.

This easy-to-use primer lays out 135 principles of clear writing, dictation, tone, grammar, syntax, organization, and format. Filled with before-and-after examples and illustrations from the legal world, the book is both a welcome refresher for the practicing lawyer and an indispensable reference for anyone in the legal profession.

Unlike conventional legal research books that limit their focus to teaching students how to find and use the various sources of law, this book stresses a systematic, practice-oriented approach to acquiring legal-research skills. It presents a simple yet highly effective research strategy that helps students efficiently solve the types of complex legal-research problems they can expect to encounter in the workplace. In addition, the book includes a section on the various primary and secondary sources of law, and how best to find and use them, as well as a section containing tips for summer interns and associates, and a Trouble-Shooting Guide to help students overcome the occasional obstacles that may crop up in their research projects. The book also includes a detailed Research Checklist for students to use before turning in their work. For these reasons, the book makes an ideal stand-alone text for the first-year legal-research class, as well as an excellent supplementary text for advanced legal-research classes.

Ohio Legal Research provides a concise introduction to Ohio-specific primary authorities and research tools for readers new to legal research or new to researching Ohio law. Ohio Legal Research introduces federal resources alongside their Ohio counterparts, which makes the text useful for an introductory research course that covers both state and federal research. Written with the understanding that research is best learned by practice, this book offers succinct explanation to guide the novice without including so much as to overwhelm. The updated second edition incorporates recent changes to the major electronic research platforms, while maintaining a process focus that will help the reader no matter which platform is available. Updated web addresses also point the researcher to many materials available for free online, including the recently adopted, official electronic reporting system for Ohio case law. Ohio Legal Research includes a fully revised chapter on citation that teaches basic citation form using the major citation manuals and, perhaps most significant to the Ohio practitioner, the recently overhauled Ohio Manual of Citations. This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.

Legal research can be costly for students and practitioners in two ways: time and money. A SHORT & HAPPY GUIDE TO ADVANCED LEGAL RESEARCH identifies available free and fee-based legal research options as good, cheap and/or fast. This book can streamline the process of legal research involving any subject matter and during any stage of civil litigation. An overview of the litigation analytics and artificial intelligence features available from Bloomberg Law, Lexis Advance, and Westlaw Edge is also included, in the likely event you graduated from law school before 2019. Ann Walsh Long is the Head of Research & Digital Collections/Assistant Professor of Law at the Lincoln Memorial University School of Law. Ann has also worked at the Environmental Protection Agency's Headquarters Library and in four "Big Law" firms. As a former law firm librarian, Ann taught hundreds of summer and new associates how to conduct cost-effective legal research, and advised firms on how best to recover those costs from clients.