Abstract

The first year of law school is chock-full of new experiences. Students can become overwhelmed in the face of so much change that they forget why they chose law school as a career path. They often lose sight of their end goal and need a touchstone to ground them back to their initial interests. Legal Research is the ideal first-year class to connect the acquisition of legal skills with interesting topics in a way that encourages students’ engagement in their present and future learning. By adding a student-selected subject context to their class, Legal Research instructors can incorporate contextualized learning and active learning techniques that improve student engagement and student learning. This article discusses the transformation of a generic, required, first-year legal research course into one that divides into four small (18–20 students) classes, each with one of four topics: patent, trademark and copyright, traditional practice, and social justice. In addition, it envisions future innovations to improve student engagement and student learning.

Department

Law

Subject

legal research, pedagogy, contextualized learning, topical research, Trademark, Copyright, Patent, Social Justice

Publication Date

Fall 10-26-2018

Journal Title

Legal Reference Services Quarterly

Publisher

Routledge: Taylor & Francis

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/0270319X.2018.1522898

Document Type

Article

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