palsgraf_polka

Right now I'm taking Legal Research and Legal Writing. My legal writing class focuses mostly on the formats for writing legal briefs and legal memos and how to determine what you need to put in those memos. How to look at a case and determine what was the legal question (or questions) being asked, and once you determine this, how to pare down the decision into a few short sentences but not leave out legally relevant facts. It's actually very challenging and I struggled with it a bit before finally catching on and now I'm pretty good at it. Legal Research is just that; we are taught all the different methods for legal research, the authorities, how to cite them, the resources available, etc. We use the law library where our class is held along with Westlaw. I don't know if you have the same kind of electronic resource like that in Holland (BTW, I just looked at your userinfo to confirm you are indeed in Holland and saw that you have an interesting school history. Are you of Muslim Indonesian descent? I had an internet friend in Rotterdam who was Indonesian who took me on a tour of Amsterdam when I was there in 1996 and he said there were a lot of Indonesians in Holland because Indonesia was under Dutch control for a long time- and you lived in Ann Arbor which is a strong Muslim neighborhood in the US. Sorry, I digress.) but it's really cool to have all that at your fingertips below. Although, if I had my choice, I'd rather have a certain cannibal lawyer on my F-List be my Legal Research and Legal Writing teacher. :) But I am enjoying this quarter, even though it is challenging.