Unit of Study LAWS4001 Independent Legal Research (2026)

Unit description

Students must be able to find the law in an efficient and expeditious manner before they are able to apply it to the solution of a real or hypothetical legal problem. This unit will further develop legal research skills that have been introduced at an earlier stage in the degree. These skills must be complemented by the ability to critically analyse, to discover a problem or philosophical issue worthy of investigation, to establish hypotheses concerning the problem, where this is appropriate, and to test the hypotheses and present the outcomes of the investigation.

Unit content

Students enrolled in this unit will have completed LAWS4002 Legal Research: Context, Perspective and Method to undertake the groundwork for their Honours work. In that unit, each student was assigned a member of academic staff as their research supervisor. This unit follows and involves applying the skills and knowledge acquired in LAWS4002 to undertake independent research and develop a piece of academic writing. Accordingly, students are required to undertake an independent legal research project and prepare an article-length paper to present their research findings. The unit assessor will confirm that suitable supervision arrangements are in place to ensure students and their supervisors can continue to work together over this teaching period. We hope students find LAWS4001 a special opportunity to articulate their views about an area of the law which interests them.