Units

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Sample subject outline - Semester 1 2012

Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.

Rationale

Legal research, writing and critical analysis skills are essential for all lawyers whether they are engaged in private legal practice, government or corporate practice. This unit is designed to be undertaken in your final year for the purpose of enhancing your skills of issue identification, legal research, critical analysis and effective writing in the context of a complex multi-dimensional problem. The unit encourages independent learning across a number of legal areas using these skills.

Aims

The aim of this unit is assist you to develop the advanced legal skills necessary to solve and communicate options for the resolution of complex legal problems (issue identification, legal research, critical analysis and effective writing), in a professional context. The unit also aims to advance your ability to acquire new knowledge independently. The focus of the unit is on teaching doctrinal legal research skills.

Objectives

After completing this unit, you should be able to:
1. identify relevant issues, whether legal or otherwise, from a given set of facts, state them clearly and also seek or suggest additional information required to solve a problem (issue identification);
2. locate and extract relevant legal and non-legal information from given facts, documents, and client instructions;
3. find authoritative legislation and case law (primary sources), commentary (secondary sources) and policy (if applicable) relevant to the legal issues identified;
4. interpret and critique the relevant law and policy using techniques of legal reasoning;
5. draw conclusions based upon results of that interpretation and critique; (analysis and critical reasoning); and
6. using plain English principles, communicate the results of your research and analysis in a manner appropriate to a professional legal context.

Content

The material covered in this unit includes:
1. An overview of the research process
2. Conceptualising a research problem
3. Locating and retrieving relevant legal sources (both primary and secondary)
4. Critically evaluating research results and method
5. Synthesising the relevant legal sources retrieved so as to clearly state the law
6. Applying the law to a research problem
7. Effective writing in a professional legal context

Skills
In this unit you further develop the following skills:
1. Critical thinking and legal analysis
2. Problem solving
3. Information technology literacy
4. Written communication
5. The ability to work independently, teamwork and time management

Graduate Capabilities
Your understanding of the unit content and the further development of these skills will assist you to acquire the follow law graduate capabilities:
1. Discipline Knowledge
2. Problem Solving, Reasoning and Research
3. Effective Communication
4. Life Long Learning

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Student learning is facilitated by lectures, tutorials (including electronic research training tutorials) and online material.

Lectures
One hour lectures are delivered in Weeks 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, and are also streamed to the online teaching site. A further two weeks of lectures (which demonstrate the research problem solving process using a previous year's problem as a model) are delivered by streamed video and are accessible from the online teaching site on the first day of the semester.

There are no lectures in the remaining weeks. These weeks are purposely left vacant to allow students maximum time to complete their major assessment task.

Tutorials
One and a half hour tutorials run in weeks 2-5 and 8-12. The tutorials have two purposes: first, to give individualised instruction in electronic legal research, legal problem-solving and research methods and second, to give students practical exercises in the use of those skills.


External students
Additional online material to assist external students will take the form of chat rooms and a discussion board. There is no external attendance school in this unit.

Assessment

In this unit there is both formative assessment (to receive feedback on your learning) and summative assessment (to receive feedback and a mark).You will receive formative feedback on your work through lectures, tutorial practice tasks, feedback in tutorial exercises, and assessment tasks. You can also obtain formative feedback from the materials posted to the QUT Blackboard site.

Assessment name: Memo 1
Description: Memorandum to partner(max 1500 word). You are required to draft a memorandum to your supervising partner in a hypothetical law firm identifying the primary legal issues from a given set of facts. The memorandum should also outline what further information is needed from the client to provide advice to him or her and briefly state why.
Relates to objectives: 1-3 and 6
Weight: 20%
Internal or external: Both
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: Week 6

Assessment name: Memo 2
Description: Memorandum of advice to partner(max 3000 words). Following the submission of the first memorandum to your partner, you will be given a more comprehensive set of facts (based on the information that was requested and then received from the client). This revised set of facts will then form the basis for you to write a memorandum of advice for your supervising partner outlining the client's legal issues and providing answers to those issues by identifying, analysing and applying relevant legal authorities.
Relates to objectives: 1-6
Weight: 60%
Internal or external: Both
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: Week 13

Assessment name: Letter of advice
Description: Letter of advice to client(3 A4 pages). You will also write a letter of advice to the client outlining in plain English your advice in relation to their legal issues.
Relates to objectives: 1-6
Weight: 20%
Internal or external: Both
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: Week 13

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty means that you are expected to exhibit honesty and act responsibly when undertaking assessment. Any action or practice on your part which would defeat the purposes of assessment is regarded as academic dishonesty. The penalties for academic dishonesty are provided in the Student Rules. For more information you should consult the QUT Library resources for avoiding plagiarism.

Resource materials

Recommended reference materials:
B Bott and R Talbot-Stokes, Nemes and Coss' Effective Legal Research, 4th ed, LexisNexis Butterworths, Sydney, 2009.
R Macdonald, and D Clark-Dickson, Clear and Precise: Writing for today's lawyers, 2nd ed, Thomson Custom Publishing, Sydney, 2005.

The Study Guide will be used in class, and students should also access the statutory, common law and secondary authorities referred to in the Study Guide.

Blackboard Site
Online resources for this unit are available in the unit blackboard site.

Risk assessment statement

There are no out of the ordinary risks associated with this unit.

Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.

Last modified: 16-Dec-2011