Essential Legal Skills: A Guide for First Year Law Students Second Edition is designed with first year law students in mind. It provides a preliminary introduction to many of the skills that first year law students need to master, structured through the lens of the commonly used IRAC problem-solving methodology (Issue-Rule-Application/Analysis-Conclusion).
This book takes a practical approach to legal problem-solving, and guides students through each step of the problem-solving process. As such, each chapter is designed to explain foundational legal skills, and to help students to develop and master these skills at the beginning of their legal education.
While this book introduces students to academic skills that are specifically relevant to law, it also introduces two practical legal skills: client interview and negotiation. These skills are particularly beneficial for first year law students and provide an innovative way of analysing legal questions and material facts (client interviewing), while evaluating both perspectives of a legal dispute (negotiation). Early development of these skills will help law students to engage with legal materials and hone their legal analysis, which is deepened through the use of reflection as a tool to improve relevant skills.
The Second Edition has been updated to include generative artificial intelligence (genAI). There is a specific chapter devoted to genAI, and genAI themes are also embedded throughout each chapter as relevant. GenAI is often thought of as a negative in higher education and in law. While this chapter does caution students about genAI use and encourage them to carefully read assignment instructions and to understand the parameters of what they are and are not allowed to do, the chapter also proposes tips and tricks for ways genAI can be used to enhance learning. In line with the broader themes of this book, these tips, traps, and tricks are addressed through the framework of IRAC.
- Chapter 1 introduces students to studying at university and studying law, with emphasis on academic integrity and legal ethics.
- Chapter 2 teaches students how to read and analyse secondary sources.
- Chapter 3 teaches students how to read and analyse primary sources.
- Chapter 4 explains the process of legal research and teaches students how to find relevant sources.
- Chapter 5 introduces the process of legal analysis, with emphasis on the most difficult components of this, and tips to improve analysis.
- [NEW!] Chapter 6 considers how generative artificial intelligence (genAI) works, how it can and cannot be used in a legal context, and examines how it is currently used and regulated in the legal profession.
- Chapter 7 introduces students to client-centred skills including client interview and negotiation.
- Chapter 8 teaches students how to reflect on their skills and experiences, to improve their practice.
About the Author
Dr Samantha Kontra is an Academic in Law and Law Teaching Program Director at Flinders University. Her teaching areas focus on teaching legal and academic skills to first year law students, and she has a strong interest in teaching legal skills and skill development, including interviewing, negotiation and advocacy (mooting). She has been heavily involved in orientation, transition and mentoring programs in Law at Flinders for many years, and has coordinated these programs since 2015. She has taught first year law since 2012. She also teaches tort law and is particularly interested in negligence cases related to psychological harm, which draws together her previous studies in both law and behavioural science (psychology). Her research interests focus on legal negotiation, with a particular emphasis on preparation for legal negotiation and legal negotiation education, which is explored in her PhD thesis. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) and also holds an Advance Higher Education Senior Fellowship.
