Maine Adult Education

This is an online course.

This exciting course is designed to teach advanced and specialized approaches to utilize the legal resources available in a law library, and elsewhere. The conceptual differences between computer-assisted legal research and hard-copy research will be taught. You will also learn how to formulate WESTLAW search queries and effectively and efficiently use WESTLAW and other online legal research methods as time-saving devices in legal research and legal writing. This course is designed to examine more thoroughly advanced and specialized approaches to utilizing the legal sources available in the law library and online. Successful graduates of this non-credit course will be awarded a Certificate of Completion from the college or university of their choice.

Lesson 1: Legal Authorities and Citations

Lesson 2: Legal Analysis

Lesson 3: Westlaw© online legal research

Lesson 4: The Legal Memorandum of Law

Lesson 5: Manual Legal Research

Lesson 6: Types of Legal Writing Course Objectives

How to conduct manual legal research.  How to conduct electronic legal research.  How to find, interpret, and use various types of legal authorities.  How to sherardize legal authorities.  How to write a legal analysis.  How to draft a Memorandum of Law.  How to briefcase opinions How to engage in various types of legal writing, participants will be expected to complete reading and homework assignments and will be assigned an advanced legal research project and legal writing assignment. Final research and writing projects will be presented for grading to the instructor or CLS by Barbri as a prerequisite of course completion.

PREREQUISITE: Students must have completed the core Paralegal Certificate Course or have one year of paralegal experience before enrolling in this course.