Tips for Law Students on Organizing and Developing a Thesis

Thesis is a proposition maintained by argument; a research dissertation advancing a point of view, especially one required for an academic degree. As a senior law student you will probably be assigned a legal research paper as a requirement for graduation. This "senior thesis" assignment causes many law students considerable anxiety, even though they have written numerous papers in law school: essay examinations, pleadings, memoranda, and appellate briefs. This assignment differs from those, however, because it requires the drafter to consider both the plan of attack and the organization of ideas.

Click Here to Find Law Student Jobs on LawCrossing

The first and most common question is "How do I begin?" The answer is easy: Begin with an outline.

I. The Outline

A. Who Needs to Outline?
You do. If you ask the question, it is probably because you are reluctant to prepare an outline. But writers who hate to outline are most in need of doing so. The failure to organize your ideas before you begin to write your paper may cause you to outline after you finish writing-and having to reorganize your entire paper. For a thesis without the structure an outline provides is like Christmas tree ornaments without the tree. Without structure, a writer's bright ideas, like the Christmas tree ornaments, will end in a heap on the floor.
Samuel Johnson commented to his friend Boswell on the need to organize ideas, when he said of a mutual acquaintance: "He has a great deal of learning, but it never lies straight. There is never one idea by the side of another; 'tis all entangled."To avoid tangles, prepare an outline. What else does an outline accomplish?
• It helps you avoid gaps and digressions.
• It shows you where transitions are needed.
• It tells you what you should include in the text and what you should footnote.
• It tells your reader what is coming and where.

B. What Should the Outline Contain?
This is the second question students ask as they think about writing a thesis. It is harder to answer, and it reminds me of a question a little boy asked his mother in a letter from camp: "Yesterday we went on an overnight hike in the woods and I lost my sweater. Where do you think I should look for it?"
Fortunately, more help is available for thesis writers than the mother could give her son. Following is an all-purpose outline that should be adaptable to almost any thesis topic. But because it is generalized, it is not completely suitable for any specific use. It is helpful only as a starting point. Adjust the outline to suit your particular topic, then continue to modify it as you develop your thesis. You should consider any outline you prepare as organic, not established. Always be sure to adjust the outline to fit your thesis, not your thesis to fit your initial outline.

C. Sample Outline
I. Introduction

A. Why you chose this subject
B. What you intend to do with this subject

II. History

A. The genesis of your subject
B. The changes that have occurred during its development
C. Why it has developed into its present state

III. Status quo

A. Its advantages
B. Its defects
C. Why it cannot (should not) continue

IV. Changes suggested (attempted) by others

A. Advantages
B. Defects

V. Your ideas for change

A. Advantages
B. Defects

VI. Conclusion

A. Predictions
B. Summary of ideas presented in paper

The above sample outline can be adapted to fit your thesis topic.

Suppose, for example, that your topic is that the language of regulations and legislation is often confusing and could be improved by the use of plain English and suitable punctuation. You might use the divisions of the sample outline to prepare your initial outline, perhaps as follows:

Your Outline 1:
1) Introduction

A. Examples of avoidable litigation that occurred due to badly constructed statutes and regulations
B. Illustration of language and punctuation modification that would have prevented the litigation

2) History of your topic

A. Discussion of the origin and development of the currently used language and punctuation in legal documents
B. Discussion of the historical reasons for resistance to changes in form

3) Status quo

A. Illustration of current "new" style of drafting
B. Illustration of current "old" styles of drafting

4) Changes suggested (attempted) by others

A. Lawyers in the forefront of the plain English movement
B. States that have passed laws regarding plain English
C. Non-legal critics who have suggested changes

5) Your ideas for change

A. How your suggestions differ from others
B. Advantages of your ideas
C. Possible disadvantages of your ideas

6) Redraft of a poorly crafted statute, applying your ideas to improve clarity

How to Use Your Research in Your Outline (and Adapt Your Outline to Your Research)

In the "olden days" (B.C.: before copiers), to do their research authors laboriously covered large numbers of index cards with voluminous notes, indicating at the top of each card where in their manuscript the notes on that particular card applied. They had to take care to copy verbatim whatever quotations they might need to use and to summarize all of the other ideas succinctly enough to fit on the index cards. Furthermore, the source of all material had to be meticulously noted so that it could be referred to if necessary for verification later. Thus both outlining and research were time-consuming, burdensome processes. Some writers still use this method, although it is the one most apt to cause error-and writer's cramp.

Writers who take advantage of photocopiers have an easier job. They may still prefer to use index cards, one to a source, with the source of the data indicated at the top of each card. Much less writing is necessary, however, because the materials consulted can be photocopied. Index card notations will refer to the photocopied materials and the labor of note-taking is therefore minimized.

The simplest method is to apply your research directly to your outline, while at the same time adapting your outline to your research. Use a loose leaf notebook for your outline. Assign one page of the notebook to each heading and sub-heading of your outline. Then, as you do your research, label it with a few Identifying phrases and put those phrases into your outline. At the same time, on the photocopied research material, indicate where in your outline it belongs. As you continue your research, you may find that the material belongs elsewhere in your outline or that your outline needs revision. If you decide, for example, that heading III is really better as heading VI, it is easy to switch the pages in the loose leaf notebook.

Click Here to Find Summer Associate Jobs on LawCrossing

Another distinct advantage of this method is that, once you have placed all relevant material into each heading and subheading, you can put it into the proper order within its category and decide what transitional words or paragraphs are needed to make the ideas flow. When your outline is fully fleshed out, you will be able to add relevant material in order to fill any gaps, and to eliminate or assign to the footnotes any material that prevents a clear logical presentation of your ideas. When you have done all this, your paper will be all-but written. The first draft should be easy to write; after that, it will be just a matter of polishing.

II. Organization of the Thesis

The organization of your thesis as an entirety is hard to discuss because, unlike its paragraphs and sentences, the complete thesis cannot easily be set forth for dissection and criticism. However, there are some helpful guidelines for thesis organization. Professor Barbara Child compares the document drafter to an architect and construction engineer. That metaphor is also appropriate for thesis writers.

As the architect of your thesis you will want to construct it so that the divisions are logically arranged and the subdivisions are convenient for readers to find and to follow.

A. General Guidelines for Thesis Organization
1. All of the subdivisions of your thesis should refer directly back to your central topic, your main subject. All subdivisions should also relate clearly to one another.
2. Your finished thesis should contain no reiteration of ideas, no conclusions lacking complete analysis. The total should be the sum of the parts, not more or less.
3. All inappropriate information should be excluded. No matter how useful the subject may be in another context, resist the temptation to include it here.

B. Help for Your Readers

1. Make general assertions first.
In your thesis, ordinarily discuss general assertions before qualifications, important subjects before less significant ones, more widely held theories before idiosyncratic ones, and more conventional views before radical ones. What follows is a proposed constitutional amendment, which failed to follow the simple arrangement just suggested. It was turned down by the voters, (Perhaps they did not understand it).

2. Put your ideas into appropriate order.

• Prefer chronological development.
• Use logical development.

Some discussions do not lend themselves to chronological development. Perhaps events do not occur in chronological sequence. Perhaps the points you need to make should be discussed in the order of their importance to your general thesis. Then you should choose logical development. As long as you discuss one point at a time, and as long as your discussion is thorough (but not repetitive), focused (not discursive), your ideas will emerge clearly and cogently.

C. The Paragraph
"Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so the paragraphs must fit on to one another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages. . . (Winston Churchill)

1. Why paragraph?
Paragraphs break up your writing into units which, properly arranged, permit the orderly movement of ideas from the beginning of your manuscript to its conclusion. Paragraphing is therefore important in all writing, but even more important in legal writing, in which clear and logical reasoning is essential.
The familiar paragraph indentation at intervals on each page of writing promises the reader that with each paragraph a new set of ideas is being introduced and developed. So paragraphing is psychologically important to the reader. It is also important to the writer. The process forces him to develop fully the ideas he has introduced, since he knows that a paragraph of fewer than four to six sentences probably indicates incomplete idea development * and that a paragraph of more than half a page of print is not only a fearful bore to read but a combination of too many ideas. The four-to-six-sentence rule can (and should) be broken occasionally. One-or-two-sentence paragraphs, sparingly used, are effective for summation of arguments, interjection of contrasting ideas, transition devices, or emphasis.

2. Paragraph development according to topic
Paragraphs can be developed by any of the following methods: definition; classification; process; illustration; cause and effect; comparison and contrast; induction; and deduction. Frequently, more than one method of development occurs in a single paragraph.

Many books on English composition imply that you should choose among the methods of paragraph development before writing each paragraph. This procedure would be stultifying and a waste of time, for you are no doubt using these methods quite intuitively as you write. However, after you have finished writing the first draft of your manuscript, if any paragraphs seem undeveloped, overdeveloped, or confusing, consider varying your methods of paragraph development as one means of improving your writing. Here they are:

a. Definition
Definition explains what something is by saying what it includes and what it excludes. The item being defined is first put into a class of similar items and then is differentiated from those items.
b. Classification
Classification places items into categories, according to their similarities or their differences. In their opinions, courts sometimes expand and sometimes narrow classes-and occasionally even create new ones.
c. Process
Process involves orderly, step-by-step explanation. The ability to describe procedures and events in the proper order and without omissions is valuable in legal writing because of the importance of detail, accuracy, and completeness in legal matters.
d. Illustration
The method of illustration in paragraph development is one in which concrete examples are used to explain an abstract concept or to persuade the reader of its validity.
e. Cause and effect
You use this type of paragraph development whenever you raise a question of why something occurs and then provide the answer.
f. Comparison and Contrast
In your legal writing as students, in your legal arguments as lawyers, and in your legal decisions as judges, you will often use comparison and contrast as you analogize and distinguish the facts of already-decided cases from the facts of your case. That is because courts "reason from precedent," deciding cases in accordance with rules laid down in earlier cases with the same facts.

Because the facts of your case probably do not exactly resemble the facts of the precedent cases, the court's decision about whether to apply the rule established by precedent will depend upon the number and weight of the positive resemblances compared with the number and weight of the negative resemblances (the similarities and dissimilarities between your facts and those of the cases that resulted in the rule). Of course, what is one lawyer's material and relevant fact may be another's immaterial and irrelevant red herring. You will need to persuade the court to accept your view.

g. Induction
Induction is the process of forming a general conclusion (a generalization) by examining a number of particular examples. The process of induction is therefore essentially a search for the explanation of a pattern. At the close of your examination of the relevant particulars you will make an inductive leap, a shift from the listing of particular examples to a conclusion about the entire group, including those particulars that are not available for your inspection. In doing so, you make the assumption that the unavailable particulars exactly resemble the ones you have examined.

The conclusion you reach at the end of the inductive process is expressed as a probability, not a certainty. The more particulars you have to examine the more certain will be the generalization you can form from examining them. When you use induction, and when you examine how others use it, be careful to avoid two errors: hasty generalization and faulty generalization.

h. Deduction
Deduction is the opposite of induction. In legal reasoning, the generalization reached by the process of induction after an examination of a number of particulars becomes the rule (doctrine, principle) governing subsequent similar cases (new particulars).

III. Avoiding Logical Fallacies
Beginning with Aristotle, philosophers have classified and discussed the various kinds of logical fallacies. An author whose name is seldom included in the list is Max Shulman, whose marvelous tale, "Love is a Fallacy," should be on every law student's reading list.* Not only is it good for a laugh (a rare-enough commodity in the serious pursuit of legal education), but it describes the perils of fallacious reasoning as well as many philosophical treatises do. "Love is a Fallacy" is about a clever, logical, supercilious law student who has met a beauteous coed he considers suitable for his companionship in every respect, except intellectually. He therefore takes on the task of teaching her logic so that she will become a superior intellectual being, worthy of himself.

Click Here to View the 2015 LawCrossing Salary Survey of Lawyer Salaries in the Best Law Firms