Methodology of Finnish Legal Research (5cr)

Objective

The purpose of the course is to
1. Familiarise students with ways to conduct legal research.
2. Help students to select the research methodology best suited to their research topic.

Content

The key questions of this study unit 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?

Qualifications

The student must have completed ONPOOL3 and have the sufficient amount of ECTS required for Master level studies to sign up for the course.

Assessment criteria, approved/failed

Passing the exam requires scoring at least 50 % points on the final exam.

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, which is helpful in preparing students for final exam.

Further information

The course is uploaded on the University of Lapland’s LearnDash platform and is located on
The coordinator of the course is Olga Pushina. To access the course, please sign up on Peppi and contact the coordinator for your registration key.

Execution methods

The study unit is an online LearnDash platform consisting of pre-reading material, pre-exam, multimedia lectures, and final exam. The study unit takes place online and can only be completed on the learning platform.

Accomplishment methods

The study unit requires the student to
1. Familiarize oneself with the pre-reading material.
2. Complete the pre-exam based on the pre-reading.
3. Complete lessons on the following topics:
- The general features law
- The drafting of legislation
- Judicial application
- Concrete legal research
- Contextual legal research
- Research process and outcomes
- Supervision and assessment
4. Complete the final exam based on the lessons.