Stalking the Golden Topic: A Guide to Locating and Selecting Topics for Legal Research Papers
![handle is hein.journals/utahlr1996 and id is 927 raw text is: Stalking the Golden Topic: A Guide to Locating and
Selecting Topics for Legal Research Papers
Heather Meeker*
I. INTRODUCTION
For most people, two things are certain: death and taxes. For
law students, one other thing is certain: the necessity to write at
least one research paper to complete their legal education. To ac-
complish this goal, the student faces a high hurdle: finding the right
topic. The student of law, commanded to find a research topic, is
faced with a daunting chicken-and-egg problem-the student must
do a great deal of research to assess a topic on which to do research.
The perfect paper topic is a delicate balance of generality and
obscurity. It is amateurish to write a paper on a topic that is al-
ready well covered in legal literature. But it is nearly impossible to
write on a topic that is covered nowhere, because the essence of
legal writing is the quotation and citation of existing sources.
Achieving this balance is partly an ongoing task as the paper takes
shape, but a topic of correct scope helps focus and streamline the
process.
In addition, the perfect paper topic must be novel. In order to
graduate from Boalt Hall School of Law, for instance, one must
write a good quality 'student comment' of the sort that appear[s] in
major law reviews.' Novelty is a criterion by which law journals
review article topics. In addition, many professors require that
students' seminar papers add to the current body of legal thought.
Therefore, whether a student has any intention of publishing or not,
the requirement of novelty means that the student must avoid pre-
emption, or selecting a topic on which there is already a published
article.
A recent article discussing information science journals de-
scribed the criteria used for manuscript acceptance: 'V]alidity of
claims, originality, clarity, reader appeal, [and] importance of sub-
* J.D., 1994, Boalt Hall School of Law. This paper was originally written as a
pathfinder for the advanced legal research course at Boalt Hall School of Law,
taught by Robert Berring and Kathleen Vanden Heuvel. The author would like to
thank Karen Norgaard for her excellent assistance in tabulating and analyzing
survey results and updating this paper in 1996.
1. UNIVERSITY OF CAL. AT BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW (BOALT HALL), ACADEMIC
RULEs § 1.01(E)(1) (1994).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/utahlr1996&div=33&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Stalking the Golden Topic: A Guide to Locating and Selecting Topics for Legal Research Papers
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