A Preliminary Analysis of Law Review Notes

Abstract:     
While our understanding of legal English as used in professional or legislative contexts has been growing, our understanding of English in academic legal contexts is very limited. Moreover, research in English for Academic Purposes has focused largely on areas other than law and therefore often does not apply. This is particularly true for research paper writing, given the discourse conventions of legal research or seminar papers. The study presented here offers an analysis of published student-written legal research papers, which can serve as a model for the teaching of seminar paper writing. After a discussion of some general characteristics of these research papers, we focus our detailed analysis on the introductory sections, and show how they are both similar to and different from those found in research article (RA) introductions as described in Swales (1990).

Keywords: English for specific purposes, ESP, legal English, academia, law, academic legal English, legal context, legal research papers, student-written, academic legal research writing, law students

Accepted Paper Series