Research is an integral part of academic work. The ugly truth of life is many young scholars, especially those who keep studying, do it wrong or miss extra opportunities to explore their research topic in greater depth. In this article, we’ll emphasize the most essential details of researching for law school assignments so you can make yours efficient.
Why research for law school assignments
First, a few questions:
What makes research so critical to do for assignments? Why do you need to search for sources and consider placing them in your document when writing an essay, a thesis, or any other type of law school paper? Why seek law assignment help when you struggle to find and organize your scholarly sources?
Look:
School- and college-level programs have specific rules and expectations for academic work. Whether you’re in a law school or an art college, they will require scholarly sources to use with properly formatted references and citation style. Why?
Your ability to choose, evaluate, and organize reliable sources in assignments allows instructors to assess your critical thinking and analytical skills. They’ll see whether you understand the topic and how you address the existing knowledge in the niche to prove your claims and support your arguments in academic papers.
All academic papers, including your law school assignments, are based on evidence (facts, studies, proven data, etc.). So, it stands to reason you should research to find that evidence and decide which are relevant and up-to-date to use in your work.
How to understand the focus of your research
Whether you choose a topic for your assignment or get a particular one from your instructor, it’s critical to understand what the assignment expects from you.
How do you know how to organize the research process to find the information that can help you with a law school assignment?
- Check the assignment requirements: What instructions does a lecturer have for you?
Pay attention to the types of sources they expect you to use (books, journals, scholarly articles) and whether they restrict you to using particular sources (primary or secondary, for example).
- Decide on the approach to completing the assignment: Whether critical or descriptive, each will require particular source types from you.
Before writing an assignment, brainstorm the most appropriate keywords for researching the topic and formulating your core argument (thesis statement). Here’s how:
- Analyze your assignment question and highlight the key concepts within it.
- Craft a grid for each concept to map out ideas for your topic.
- List phrases that can describe the topic and are relevant to your assignment question. You’ll use them when searching and evaluating the sources for your paper.
Identifying and evaluating information sources
For efficient research, you must distinguish between a worthy source and rubbish. Learn to critically evaluate information to determine whether it’s relevant and appropriate for your academic work.
Why bother?
- Your research and chosen sources will influence your final grade for an assignment. (Instructors expect you to demonstrate your research skills and use reliable evidence to support your arguments and claims.)
- Your research skills will help you avoid using inaccurate, outdated, and purposely misleading information in your academic assignments.
How can you evaluate sources and determine their credibility and reliability? Use the CRAAPP test and consider resources that meet all six criteria:
- Currency — the timeliness of information
- Relevance — the importance of that information for your academic needs
- Authority — the source of the information, the author’s credentials and qualifications
- Accuracy — the reliability and truthfulness of the information
- Purpose — the reason this information exists (Does it persuade, entertain, inform, or sell?)
- Privilege — the publishing rights granted to that information (Do you have any barriers to accessing it?)
Relevant, current, and accurate information on the topic will help you state a thesis for your assignment and organize all the arguments and evidence to develop it throughout the paper.
The types of sources to use when researching for law school assignments
The number one question most young scholars face when researching for their academic papers: What resources are credible and reliable enough to use? Is it okay to address Wikipedia? May we refer to news websites in essays or research papers?
The short answer is yes, we can.
A longer answer:
Everything depends on what website to use and which category of your sources it falls under.
Thus, all resources you use as references in your paper can be divided into three categories:
- Primary sources are those that provide firsthand information without interpretation and evaluation. Examples include works of literature and art, diaries, historical artifacts, letters, and newspapers.
- Secondary sources comment on, analyze, and evaluate other primary, secondary, or tertiary resources. Examples include essays, journal articles, reviews, or textbooks.
- Tertiary. These are sources providing overviews or summaries of primary or secondary sources. Examples include dictionaries, annotated bibliographies, handbooks, encyclopedias, chronologies, and indexes.
For your law school assignment to be efficient, consider these sources when researching your topic: books, academic journals, reports, studies, dissertation papers, broadcast media, databases, newspapers, scholarly articles, and conference papers. When using information from popular magazines or mainstream media, please don’t take it for granted; re-check it several times to confirm its accuracy and relevance to your academic needs.
Four strategies for the best research results
Here are the top three places (search tools) to find resources for your law school assignment:
- Google. Use it to search for non-traditional academic sources like news or entertainment.
- Google Scholar. This one is for academic articles, books, and research you may not find in local or university libraries. (Tip: Double-check the publication date to ensure your chosen document is still relevant.)
- Library catalogs. You’ll find academic books, e-books, newspapers, and magazine articles here. When searching a catalog online, apply limiters to filter results by subject, publication dates, and more.
Whatever source you choose for research, ensure it matches your academic needs and your instructor’s requirements. Also, you can save hours and make research even more effective by using any of these four search strategies (regardless of your search tool):
- Natural language search (enter your question or thesis into a tool)
- Keyword search (remove extra words from your search and type only the major concepts of your topic; place quotation marks around keywords and combine separate terms using the word “and”)
- Filter (use it to narrow a list of search results by subject, author, publication date, location, etc., to get more relevant and up-to-date sources)
- Citation mining (use citations from other sources to lead you to related information)
In a word
With all the above tips and search strategies in your pocket, you’ll do efficient and insightful research for your law school assignment. Here is another trick: Ask AI tools to help you. ChatGPT and others can save you tons of time on research, scanning online databases in minutes and sharing lists of relevant sources on your topic. Everything you’ll need to do is revise them to ensure they are accurate and relevant to your academic work.
