Playing to Their Passion: A Legal Research Course that Resonates with Law Students
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
Publication Date
Fall 10-26-2018
Journal Title
Legal Reference Services Quarterly
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1080/0270319X.2018.1522898
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Susan Drisko Zago, Playing to their Passion: A Legal Research Course that Resonates with Law Students, 37 L.R.S.Q.75 (2018) available at https://doi.org/10.1080/0270319X.2018.1522898.