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Legal Research & Writing: Academic Legal Writing

Resources for choosing a topic, researching your topic, preemption checking, and formatting your seminar paper or journal note.

In a world of information overload, writing a cohesive, insightful paper can be a daunting task. How do you come up with an authentic topic? How do you locate relevant, authoritative resources? How should you best structure your paper? The objective of this guide is to answer these questions, or at the very least, point you to resources that will help you find those answers. This guide is designed for law students engaged in academic legal writing, whether that's a paper for a law school seminar, a law journal note, or another writing competition or opportunity. The pages of this guide take you through the steps of the writing process and point you to relevant resources along the way, from Selecting a Paper Topic to Researching Your Paper Topic to Writing Your Paper or Note.