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Law 485 - Methods: Writing Skills & Plagiarism

Avoiding Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is --

  • Intentionally or unintentionally representing ideas or material from another work as your own

  • Failing to use quotations or to paraphrase correctly

  • Self-plagiarism is turning in for a grade or publishing previously submitted work

What to cite

You should cite -

  • Any words, ideas, and materials that are not your own. 

  • Exact quotes

  • Visual and audio materials

You don't need to cite -

  • Your own words, creations, ideas, etc.

  • Your own results from experiments

  • Generally accepted knowledge (like George Washington was the first president of the United States)

Legal Writing Labs

Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law has always been progressive in motivating and preparing students for law practice. The opportunities that law school provides for developing critical legal research and writing skills are a significant part of these efforts. We want to make sure our graduates enter the profession with the tools they need to succeed.

Some useful links that may be helpful in improving students research skills are given below.

 

Chicago-Kent College of Law

Legal education at IIT Chicago-Kent is scholarly yet pragmatic, broad-based yet personalized, demanding yet anything but rigid on skills training in a variety of ways: through formidable legal writing, and advocacy.

 

Georgetown Law

The Writing Center helps students transition to the legal discourse community and supports the Law Center's goal of developing strong legal writers across the curriculum. 

 

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide.