CHESAPEAKE COLLEGE LEARNING RESOURCE CENTER

PLG 101

INTRODUCTION TO PARALEGAL STUDIES

ASSIGNMENT

Teacher has designed an assignment to introduce beginning paralegal students to Westlaw. After our demonstration, students will be given time to work on the assignment.

OUTCOMES

1.        Students will be introduced to Westlaw, highlighting the various kinds of resources. ACRL Standard 2.1

2.        Students will become acquainted with the differences between Natural Language and Terms and Connectors searching. ACRL Standard 2.2

3.        Students will read case law, differentiating among elements in a case law record and recognizing Westlaw’s evaluation system. ACRL Standard 2.1

4.        Students will consider ethical use of proprietary databases. ACRL Standard 5.1, 5.2

ACTIVITIES

I. Demonstrate Westlaw

1.        Before looking at the database itself, show students Tips on which Westlaw resources you should search for information. Show American Jurisprudence – an A-Z encyclopedia of topics, each article discusses case law, statutes, and regulations, both state and federal, etc. – a good place to start when you are unfamiliar with your topic and your sources.

2.        Look at Legal Guides on left side of screen. Family Law to Custody – determine how broad the coverage is, few specifics, no case law – this is NOT American Jurisprudence.

3.        Show HELP. Searching for documents – point out various ways to search.

4.        From Search screen, point out American Jurisprudence, as well as other sources to search. Case law, Statutes and Legislative Materials (Maryland Annotated Code is par of State Statutes)

5.        Natural language : Under what circumstances are grandparents awarded custody of grandchildren? Point out that a natural language search retrieves 20 documents (always), (unclear on how the actual retrieval mechanism works, just that it retrieves the 20 documents “most closely matching your concepts”). Search in state case law. Look at a few cases retrieved – some will discuss visitation or adoption – neither is exactly what we intended.

6.        While in results, point out yellow flag “Case has some negative history” and red flag “no longer good law”.

7.        Terms and Connectors (refer student to handout from HELP screens) allows a more precise search and more focused results: grandparent! /p grandchild! /p custody retrieves grandparent(s), grandchild(ren), and custody when all 3 terms are in the same paragraph. Amend with % (visitation OR adoption), % means NOT.

8.        Look at a case (refer student to handout from HELP screens). Point out synopsis (useful to beginning researchers), headnotes, topics and key numbers (confusing to beginning researchers and not necessary to use the database with some success – breaks out individual points of law), and the judge’s ruling (useful to beginning researchers – sometimes WAY down the page, includes usually extensive narrative, detailing the facts of the case, other cases referred to and consulted, etc.

9.        Introduce off campus use of Westlaw, consulting password sheet. Explain that our access to the database is limited to use by students – that use by law firms (including those they work for now or in the future) is unethical. Discuss.

II. Assignment

1.        Teacher has designed assignment to complement our introduction. Students will be given time to work on it directly after the demonstration.

HANDOUTS

Database passwords

Westlaw Helpscreen: Using Connectors in your Terms and Connectors Query

Westlaw Helpscreen:What is a case?