Methodology of Finnish Legal Research (5cr)

Objective

The purpose is to
1. Familiarise exchange students and foreign LLD students with ways to conduct legal research in Finland.
2. Help students to select the research methodology best suited to their research topic.

Content

The key questions of are:
- What is law and its relationship to society at large?
- How does law develop through the expertise of lawyers: the drafting of legislation, judicial decision making and academic research?
- What are the ways in which law can be studied?

The unit contains lessons on the following topics:
- The general features of law
- The drafting of legislation
- Judicial application
- Concrete legal research
- Contextual legal research
- Research process and outcomes
- Supervision and assessment

Assessment criteria, approved/failed

Passing requires completing all the required modules of the platform and scoring at least 50 % points on the final exam.

The exam is graded pursuant to the general grading table of the Law Faculty.

Materials

The learning materials are provided on the learning platform. The materials consist of texts, graphs, and expert interviews. All lectures also include online exercises with feedback.

Please note that the pre-reading materials and the pre-exam have their own section on top of the lessons.

Further information

Please direct all questions to the Coordinator, as identified above.

Execution methods

NOTE: AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS, THE UNIT IS NOT YET AVAILABLE TO BE COMPLETED. PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THE UNIT IS FINISHED IN ORDER TO ENROLL IN IT.

Please complete the study unit as follows:
1. Enrol on the Peppi Implementation.
2. Locate and self-register to the learning platform at https://blogi.eoppimispalvelut.fi/escrightsofeurope/.
3. Familiarize yourself with the pre-reading material.
4. Complete the lessons.
5. Complete the final exam based on the lessons.

Accomplishment methods

NOTE: AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS, THE UNIT IS NOT YET AVAILABLE TO BE COMPLETED. PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THE UNIT IS FINISHED IN ORDER TO ENROLL IN IT.

The unit is only available to exchange students and foreign LLD students. The corresponding Finnish unit is OTM0016, which is a compulsory unit in the University of Lapland's OTM degree.
The unit is only available as an online course.
The unit is only available as 5 credits.
The unit may be RPL'd (Recognition of Prior Learning, AHOT in Finnish) pursuant to the University of Lapland's regular RPL procedure. RPL may be sought using methodological studies from other Finnish universities.