Guide for Writing Legal Blog Posts-Part 3

I hope that after reading Part 2 of the “Guide For Writing Legal Blog Posts” you are now aware regarding the concept of plagiarism and have learnt the correct way of paraphrasing. Part 3 talks about the steps that you may follow to kick-start your legal research.

How should you start your research for writing a legal blog post?

A legal blog piece should never be a mere collection of facts and must always involve your own analysis of the law or situation involved. Follow the steps below to write a good blog post.

Step 1:

First do a simple Google search and read everything that you can find. Go till the 8^th page of Google if necessary. The knowledge which you will acquire by doing this will give you a bird’s-eye view of your topic or research area.

Verify the authenticity and validity of the information that you will use in your blog piece. Try to find a particular information in works of multiple authors. Please do not write something after reading about it from only one or two articles. Double-check the year in which a particular work has been published. If you are not careful you may end up citing a case law which has been overruled.

Step 2:

Use databases (e.g. HeinOnline, Jstor etc.) to access scholarly articles and read them. Using Google Scholar is very helpful during this stage. What is Google Scholar? Click here to know more about it. Google Books are also quite useful and though most of the time you will see that the full preview of the book is not available, still you will find a lot of material from the portions which are available. Pick keywords from these portions and search in Google again. Moreover, during Step 2 reading commentaries from known publishers are a must to understand the nitty-gritty of your topic or area of research.

Step 3:

Treasures lie in the citations. Carefully study the citations that authors have used in their scholarly articles and books. Access those citations and read them to further your research. Also, observe how the author has used the work of the original author (the one whose work has been cited) in his own writing.

Step 4:

After reading extensively on the topic for a few days form a mental structure of your blog post. Then start writing. You will observe that as you start your writing you feel that you need to do more research. Do it! Some people may say that you need to finish A to Z of your research as it will help you to form a better structure of your blog mentally. You can do that as well.

Tip: Do not mention merely the articles, sections and legal principles which support your argument. Analyse those articles, sections and legal principles and try to highlight the debate which surrounds them. Legal Commentaries will help you a lot to analyse and interpret the laws.