Academic writing required some special skills which include the basic knowledge about the structure and formation, strong grip over grammar, communication and presentation skills and knowledge about referencing and citation styles. These are the writing skills that are common and necessary for every kind of writing. But some skills vary based on the nature of the subject and type of writing. Legal research papers are slightly different from usual research papers. Law degrees involve different research papers, case notes and responses to problem questions. Law practice requires quality work.
Through research papers in law you show how much and what kind of skills do you have. It is a field that demands originality and creativity and demands a learner to think out of the box. As a law student when you will research a legal problem it will be referred to as doctrinal research. In this type of research, a researcher has to identify the relevant law and apply it to the current problem. For these purposes, a law student needs to have strong writing skills as suggested by a dissertation writing service. For evaluating your writing skills for a legal research paper you must have to answer the following question by yes or no.
Q1: Do You Know About the Resources You Need?
For gathering legal information there are two types of resources; primary resources and secondary sources. Primary resources are those laws that are already defined by the legislative and judiciary bodies. Secondary sources are those that are used to explain the primary resources. For example it will include indexes or encyclopedias, legal dictionaries, written commentary, CLE papers, journals, and articles.
Q2: Do You Understand the Legislation?
As a law student it is very important to know about the legislation. You must comprehend the division of powers, the process of legislation, and the ways of finding note-up legislation and court regulations.
Q3: Can You Analyze the Legal Issues?
Analysis of legal issues and finding the relevant facts is very important. Analysis also involves creating and establishing the connection between different facts and situations related to a problem.
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Q4: Do You Have Necessary Writing Skills?
A law student must know about writing memo and factum.
Q5: Do You Know How to Find Cases?
You must know how to search for a case by citation and topic. It is very important to know how to note-up cases effectively.
Q6: Does Your Research Paper Have The Following Characteristics?
- It is showing the problem and also presenting the solution (a legal just showing the problem and does not presenting the solution is useless and has no worth).
- It is not just a simple case note.
- It is not explaining the law only.
- Use of direct approach
- Succulent Background information
- Footnotes
Q7: Have You Chosen the Right Topic?
Your topic of legal research paper should be within the scope of your syllabus and your interest. It must not be too general or too broad. You must choose a particular area of your interest. Topic of a research paper can be chosen on different criteria. For example if you chose to criticize or support a judicial opinion then you will be writing a classic paper, you can research to expand the knowledge of a certain area of a law by proposing new directions, thirdly you can also conduct a research to criticize the theory proposed by any other scholar, fourthly you can also research about the development in law, fifthly you can research to bring sufficient support to suggest modification or alteration in an existing law, sixthly you can choose a topic relevant to the comparative analysis between case law from different jurisdictions, and lastly you can do research for recommending actions on a legal issue.
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Q8: Have You Referred The Following Sources For Gathering The Information?
- International Treaties
- Domestic Law
- International Case Law (International Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, The Human Rights Committee, Inter-American Court of Human Rights & The International Criminal Court)
- National Case Law
- Journal Articles
- Academic Literature
The above stated sources are considered valid for referring for any information and are accepted by instructors as well. It is better to use a variety of sources.
Q9: Is your Structure for Research & Referencing Appropriate?
It is better to adopt integrated research and writing styles where first you research, then read it and then write. Referencing and footnoting are crucial in legal research papers. A legal research paper is not considered reputable without referencing and footnoting. A good widely accepted structure has the following parts
- Introduction
- Methodology
- Main body
- Analysis
- Recommendations
- Conclusion
- Bibliography and Annexes
If your answer to the above stated questions is yes, then it means that your writing skills for legal research paper are good. But if your answer is no in many questions then you must need to revise and learn the skills.
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