Learning outcomes of the curricular unit

To offer 1st year law students several tools - study, legal research and legal reasoning/argument tools (oral and written) - which enable them, throughout their course as well as their professional career, to: 1) Know how to read, analyze, summarize and brief different types of legal texts, in particular academic texts and judicial decisions; 2) Know how to research and collect legal texts in particular court decisions and academic texts; 3) Be able to identify some of the main legal and policy arguments in judicial decisions and academic texts and to use them; 4) Recognize the scientific character of an academic legal text and know how to act according to the ethical rules of research; 5) Know the internal and external organization of an academic written text in the legal domain; 6) Know the basic techniques of written and oral expression for the presentation and/or defense of legal arguments.

Syllabus

Part I - Study
1.- Legal texts as the basis for the study of Law.
a) Types of legal texts (statutes, judicial decisions, academic  ones);
b) Study of legal texts: - Reading, understanding - synthesis techniques: underlining, note taking,  schematic presentations and summaries;
c) Studying at Law School: Organization and Planning the study  and preparing for exams

Part II - Research
1- Researching legal sources and academic legal texts;
2- Organizing legal data;
3- How to brief a case;
4- How to cite jurisprudence and academic writing; 5- Ethics on legal research: plagiarism and other forms of intellectual dishonesty

Part III - Legal writing and oral expression
1- Recognizing and using legal and policy arguments on judicial decisions or academic legal texts;
2- “The art of argument" (organizing and structuring contentions on a written legal piece according to the "KISS" principle);
3- External and internal elements of a scientific written legal piece;
4- Oral presentations