Legal English and Methodology

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This course is divided into two components: a legal English component, taught by the Maastricht University’s language centre, and a methodology component, taught by IPKM staff.   

During the legal English component of this course, students will learn to:

• structure their ideas in order to write clear sentences and cohesive paragraphs and to create ‘flow’;
• effectively use academic writing style characterized by precise, concise and formal language;
• use footnotes and referencing;
• report on previous literature and convey an assessment of the reported research; and
• express different functions in academic and scientific texts, such as defining, exemplifying, and comparing.

 The methodology component will inter alia address the following issues:

• how to choose the legal systems to include in the research;
• identification of sources to be consulted;
• how to find the relevant materials;
• how to use online resources and legal databases;
• the identification of  economic research that is useful in describing or understanding intellectual property law and innovation systems;
• how to describe the relationship between legal literature and case law; and
• how to deal with the interplay between international intellectual property law, EU law and the laws of the EU Member States.