| So this semester I have my first paper-as-final (two actually) and I am stumped. This should NOT be hard and yet I just can’t choose a topic. I think it is because there is so many ways I could go and also because there is already a lot out there. All of my past papers in law school have been assigned through legal writing classes. I have to turn in a topic this week for my anti-corruption class and I also have to write, sometime in November, a paper on some aspect of legal negotiation.
How do you pick a paper topic. Where do you start? Journal articles? How can you be sure you’re not covering well-covered ground? Help me, people. I have to turn in the topic this week and a freaking outline next week!!! Argh.
Well – you can always take one from the Trannyhead playbook and pick something that you think will be easy to write on (i.e. there will be lots of material for you to cite). I don’t worry so much about whether it has been written on before because, well, I don’t are. I just want to write my little 20 or 30 pages or whatever it is and move on!
As Volokh goes the academic legal writing book is great, though I didn’t find it all that useful for topic selection; the blog was much more useful for that.
SSRN would give you a good overview of current scholarship. Lawrence Lessig has also famously moved his focus from copyright to corruption.
Thanks Jim. I have that book at home in my “To Read” pile. Time to dig it out! Fortunately my awesome teacher extended our deadline today so I don’t have to turn anything in until 11/7. Hooray.
Eugene Volokh has a book called “Academic Legal Writing” (http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/writing/) that I found very helpful for all stages of law school paper writing, including selecting a topic, which is definately always the hardest part for me.
talk to your professor! he/she can probably give you some good ideas and will respect you for talking to him/her about it first.