Thinking Like a Lawyer

Full course description

The course Thinking Like a Lawyer has two components that run parallel to each other: a legal skills training and a legal challenge. During the legal skills training, you will focus on further developing your legal analytical, reasoning and argumentation skills. During the legal challenge, you will work in a team on a challenge that explores a substantive legal topic under the guidance of your legal challenge supervisor.

The skills development session will provide you with an in-depth introduction to legal argumentation. These skills development sessions provide you with the tools to identify, structure, and evaluate legal arguments. These tools are not connected to a specific legal tradition or branch of law; they are general tools that can be used in the assessment of any legal argument presented by anyone in any jurisdiction. While you will come across other courses in your studies that are designed to develop your knowledge of statutes, case law, codes, treaties, and regulations, this is probably the only one where you will have the opportunity to study the interaction between law and argumentation in a systematic way. 

The skills development begins with an introduction to basic notions of logic and critical thinking, which are necessary for making valid legal arguments, but which are not specific to the field of law. The first part of the course follows the structure of the basic unit of any form of legal reasoning: the legal syllogism. After introducing this notion, it deals with the problem of how to justify syllogisms, both internally and externally. A legal syllogism is internally justified if the conclusion follows logically from its two premises, and it is externally justified if valid arguments are provided for the truth of each of the two premises. The external justification of the first of the two premises (the major premise) is a question of law, because it consists in providing arguments for the existence of a norm. Three sessions are devoted to classifying these arguments about questions of law according to their different functions: interpreting provisions, filling legal gaps, resolving legal conflicts. The external justification of the second premise (the minor premise) is a question of fact, because it consists in giving arguments to the effect that a certain event has taken place or, in any case, that something in the world is, has been or will be in a certain way. These are evidentiary arguments, which are dealt with in a separate session. After considering the internal and external justification of the legal syllogism, the course moves on to a number of related topics: the logical relations between rights and other legal entitlements (Hohfeldian positions); fallacies; the connection between moral and legal reasoning; arguments based on justice.

In the legal challenge part of the course, which runs parallel to the skills development sessions, you will utilise your legal thinking skills by working in a team on a legal challenge project. The legal challenge projects aim to help you further develop your legal analytical, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills while engaging in an in-depth exploration of a substantive topic. Each of the legal challenge supervisors has designed a legal challenge project for you and your team to investigate, research, respond to and/or solve that is closely aligned to their area of expertise. We aim to match students as much as possible with legal challenge projects that align with their interests. For this reason, you will be given the opportunity to register your preferred legal challenge project. Some potential themes of legal challenge projects include: Contract law and Inequality; Access to Justice; Shaping the Future of the EU; AI and the Law; Crime and Punishment; Tackling Plastic Pollution through International Law; The Role of NGOs in the International Protection of Human Rights.

Assessment Methods

To pass the course Thinking Like a Lawyer, you must obtain a pass for both parts of the course: Skills Development and the Legal Challenge. The assessment of your Skills Development is based on an individual portfolio and the assessment of the Legal Challenge is based on a team portfolio.