1L - First Year Lesson Topics

This lesson covers the basics of how to research U.S. patent law. It covers both print and online resources, and gives you a thorough introduction to the primary sources of patent law. It also demonstrates the various types of secondary resources that can be useful when researching patent law.

These terms are the building blocks of contracts. This lesson provides an overview of them. After running the lesson, you should be able to distinguish the different terms, recognize them when you find them in a contract, understand the legal effects that follow from their use, and decide which one is appropriate to use when drafting a term in a contract.

Rescission is one of the ways in which contractual duties are discharged. This lesson discusses mutual rescission, rescission by one of the parties, and rescission as a remedy used by a court. This lesson may be used to introduce you to the subject or to review it.

This is an introductory lesson for international human rights law and research.

This lesson will familiarize the user with Alabama's primary sources, including the state constitution, statutes, administrative regulations, and case law. Among other things, this lesson addresses how a bill becomes law in Alabama, five ways to find Alabama statutes, and six ways to find Alabama cases with the West Digest System. The lesson discusses print and online sources, including researching primary law with free online services. This lesson does not cover secondary sources, such as treatises and law review articles.

This lesson covers the basic constitutional issues and arguments in marriage with an emphasis on same-sex marriage litigation, including Hollingsworth v. Perry, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges. It is best used as a supplement or review.

In this lesson the student will learn the basic secondary sources that are specific to the state of Indiana and how to use them. No prior knowledge of Indiana law is necessary to understand this lesson; however, students interested in learning more about legal research in Indiana law are invited to peruse the companion CALI lesson on Indiana Primary Resources.

This lesson helps the user identify when a contract is an installment contract and understand the special rules that apply to installment contracts. The lesson is confined to installment contracts for the sale of goods, focusing on UCC sec. 2-612.

This lesson will teach you how to read information from legislative history, the next step after gathering the materials as described in the CALI Lesson Federal Legislative History Research - Compiled Legislative History, which you should complete first. Additionally, this lesson will help you find just the intent behind specific language of a law or statute.

This lesson is designed to familiarize law students with Missouri's primary law sources. It gives them basic information about locating Missouri's constitution, statutes, bills, legislative history, court opinions, and administrative regulations. No prerequisite knowledge is required to follow this lesson.

This lesson is an introduction to health law with a concentration on health care law and is intended for use by upper level students interested in researching health law and policy. However, this lesson may be utilized by any researcher interested in brushing up on their legal research skills. The goal of this lesson is to (1) provide an understanding of the regulatory scheme of health care institutions at both the state and federal level; and (2) give a critical overview of the features of analytical materials (secondary sources) that you may utilize for more in-depth understanding.

This lesson provides an overview of the primary resources involved in New Jersey legal research. These include statutes, administrative regulations, administrative registers, administrative decisions, court decisions, court rules, and the state constitution.

This lesson covers the Mississippi constitution, statutes and legislation, cases, court system and rules, administrative materials, and municipal laws. It was designed for those who have a general knowledge of researching primary legal sources.

This lesson is an introduction to researching Virginia law using primary source materials, such as the Code of Virginia, Virginia state caselaw, and the Virginia Administrative Code.

This lesson covers secondary resources specific to the State of Maryland.

This lesson will assist the student both in reviewing effective legal research techniques and learning something about Social Security disability, an area of law not often studied in law school. To accomplish this the student will examine a real life fact scenario in order to navigate the primary and secondary resources in this area.

This lesson will cover the range of secondary materials available for the research of Mississippi law.  As a smaller state, there are less extensive secondary sources available than are available for other states.  However, the materials that do exist provide a deep and rich body of literature for assisting in the research of legal issues in the state.

This lesson introduces major Massachusetts secondary sources to the researcher. After this lesson, the student will be familiar with major Massachusetts practice materials and know how to find other state specific sources, such as forms, treatises, manuals, legal periodicals, and news sources.

This lesson will introduce you to the ethical considerations associated with writing client advice letters. The lesson is intended for a first year law student currently taking a legal writing course. No previous knowledge of ethics is presumed.

This lesson will introduce you to primary legal materials in Wisconsin. You will learn how to locate Wisconsin constitutional provisions, state statutes, case opinions, and regulations using both print and electronic resources.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the reader with Tennessee legal research materials and will focus on Tennessee secondary authorities. You will learn about finding aids for researching secondary authorities and explore both hard cover and online tools to access secondary source materials.

This lesson will introduce you to Tennessee primary sources. As an overview of these materials this lesson will not describe any one resource in great depth. CALI lessons describing statutes, cases, digests, etc. are a great resource for learning more about individual authorities. This lesson is intended primarily for first year law students.

This lesson guides the user through Minnesota Secondary Sources.

This lesson is designed to give a basic overview of secondary sources used in North Carolina legal research. Secondary resources are commentary on the law written by legal professionals or legal publishers. They are useful for finding background information and citations to primary resources, but it is important to remember that secondary resources are not the law.