Legal Research and Writing (Aug 5 – Sep 30)

About the Lawctopus Law School

Lawctopus Law School has taught over 6500 learners and our online certificate courses have an average rating of 92.64/100. 

Our courses come with weekly live lectures, rigorously prepared reading modules, recorded lectures, practical assignments, and personal feedback!

Each batch has a Learning Manager who ensures that all learners have a quality learning experience in the course.

How the course will help you:

The knowledge and skills you learn from the course will help you:

• Develop excellent research and writing skills. Know how to start, how to choose a topic
• Write excellent, publishable research papers that improve your ‘self’ and your ‘CV’
• Write prize-winning moot court memorials, quality research papers
• Draft high-quality legal opinions as a lawyer
• Go about footnoting, endnoting, referencing like a pro
• Learn about editing your piece and presenting it in conferences, seminars
• Learn the fundamental practical aspects of tools like SCCOnline, Manupatra

The course contains eight modules:

Module I introduces you to the idea of research generally.

It asks: how should research be done? Everyone has a different answer to this seemingly simple question. This module tells you some common answers and asks you to pick the one you like.

Module II is about research design.

It tells you the steps of a research process and discusses them briefly – choosing the topic and title, understanding and explaining the framework of your research, coming up with a research problem, making a research question & hypothesis, deciding the research methodology & method, and writing & presenting the research.

Exactly how you take these steps depends, of course, on the philosophy (‘answer’) you pick in Module I.

ASSIGNMENT 1: Choose a research topic, research questions, and get personal feedback from our subject matter experts.

Module III tells you more about the research methodology & method. What is “methodology”? What is “method”?

Although you would have already read these terms in Module II, Module III gives you more detail. It also explains how the various research methodologies can be classified under the headings qualitative, quantitative, and mixed.

Finally, it tells you which methodologies and methods are best suited to doctrinal/analytical and empirical research.

Module IV dives straight into doctrinal/analytical research methods. How do you research a given legal issue? How do you find the right legislation or case law? This module explains how to best use available resources to find the authority you need.

Module V is the empirical counterpart of Module IV. It discusses the various kinds of research methods under qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies.

ASSIGNMENT 2: Submit a rough draft, with the structure of your paper, literature review spelt out, and footnotes keyed in. Get personal feedback again from our subject matter experts.

Module VI teaches you the art of legal writing.

The module explains the art of clear writing with a structured, nuanced approach.

Module VII explains how to present legal research verbally.

Presenting in conferences and seminars is a key activity which helps you develop your research further, disseminate your insights, and build career capital. This module will help you with this.

Module VIII deals with the ethics of legal research.

What are the practices you must do during research, and which ones must you avoid?

This module explains various scenarios in which ethics become important.

ASSIGNMENT 3: Submission of the final paper. Get personal feedback for the 3rd time by our faculty!

ASSIGNMENT 4: Presentation of your paper before a panel (for best-performing students)

Assignments Module

The course has a full-fledged ‘Assignments Module’ which addresses the fundamental, practical questions of doing legal research and writing like:

• How to find a precise research topic? How to go about crafting research questions? How do I find literature gaps? “Everything I read seems alright. I don’t know how to produce something novel”.
• What all should I footnote? How do I do that?
• How do I get published in top law journals and win essay competitions?

Who is this course for?

• Undergraduate and postgraduate students of law.
• Faculty members in the fields of law, social sciences, and business wishing to revisit the fundamental of legal research and writing.
• Young lawyers (both litigators and those working in law firms who are interested in these topics.
• Students of other streams interested in gaining legal research and writing skills

Details

Duration: 8 weeks.

Course fee: Rs. 5900 (inclusive of GST).

Mode of learning:

• Completely online and self-paced with deadlines for assignments
• Detailed reading modules and resources
• Recorded video lectures
• Weekly live lectures which build on the reading modules, clear your doubts, explain assignments, etc.
• Online  forum for doubt clarification
• Regular communication over Whatsapp and Email so that you do not miss any live class or assignment deadline. We deeply ‘care’ for your learning.
• Assignment: submission of a short research paper (this assignment is divided into 3 mini-assignments)
• Personal 3-level feedback on your assignments.
• Optional reflective exercises
• Recorded webinars on careers in legal research, CV-building, earning through freelancing, etc.
• Access to alumni group which will keep you updated about future career opportunities

We go out of our way to support our students!

• Live orientation session which tells you about our platform and how to make full use of the course.
• A broadcast-only Whatsapp group to check updates easily and fast.
• Access to recorded version of the live lectures in case you miss attending them live!

Add-on benefits:

• Get a certificate issued by Lawctopus Law School after the successful completion of the course. (Don’t worry, if you put in a sincere effort in this course, you’ll get a certificate. We are liberal in our markings and give you a second chance. We do want sincere efforts from our learners).
• Free career counselling, CV, and career guidance webinars for everyone.
• Get preferable internship slots (for the top-performing 2-4 students in each batch).
• A chance to get published on Academike, Lawctopus’ Law Journal (ISSN: 2349-9796).
• An opportunity to mentor future batches for senior students, academicians, and practitioners (this is a paid, part-time, work-from-position at Lawctopus)