There are a few steps to coming up with a great topic for your paper. First, consider what your current process is for selecting a topic. The overall research process for your topic can include:

• Selecting a topic and narrowing it down
• Conducting a preemption check
• Creating a research plan
• Finding resources on the topic and updating those resources
• Assessing the available information, and
• Organizing your research

You might be investigating across several different areas of law including land use, natural resources and biodiversity, sustainability, environmental justice, environmental economics, environmental dispute resolution, and more.

Topic Selection and Finding Issues:

Narrowing: You may already have a general idea of what you would like to write about, but you need to narrow the topic down to specific subtopics you would like to discuss.

• Narrowing may involve more research into the area to determine what the real issues are related to your interest. 
• You may need to familiarize yourself with the general area or sub-area of law as well as those areas which are doctrinally connected.
  • For example, if you are interested in the topic of federal water law as it applies to Indian reservations, you would want to also familiarize yourself with federal and state law regarding the establishment of reservations as well as the impact of state law on that issue.
  • You would also want to 'drill down' to a more specific issue--are you concerned with the impact on people, or on the environment, or both? Alternatively, are you interested in how this body of law intersects with business and/or industry? 

Consider what other elements narrow your scope--time period, jurisdiction, and areas of law may help you narrow your issue to something more manageable. Length of your paper and timeline are important, too. Is your issue capable of being thoroughly discussed by you in X amount of pages? Can you accomplish a thorough examination of your issue(s) before your paper is due?

Also consider depth--is there enough material for you to investigate and evaluate sub-issues? Is the issue complex enough to justify spending a lot of time on it? Also be cautious of overly technical issues--you might inadvertently spend a disproportionate amount of time on things like explaining terminology and describing processes. 

Critically Assessing Issues: As topics interest you, do quick searches of primary and secondary sources to asses the topic's potential. Consider the following:

• What questions are you trying to answer? 
• Who is affected by this subject/issue, what are the implications and what are some potential problems?
• How will you approach or frame your topic?

One helpful tip would be to find a topic or issue that is large enough to be important and interesting, but small enough to be manageable. Some ways you can approach or frame categories for topic selection and accompanying resources are:

• Legal philosophy or jurisprudence, e.g., examining a legal problem through a particular perspective, such as poverty law, business law, constitutional law, etc.
• Historical law, e.g., tracing and demonstrating relevance of legal history to current debate. 
• Applying existing law to new or newly defined factual situations, or applying new laws to existing factual situations.

To start building a research plan, begin to document the search terms you intend to use including keywords and more sophisticated search strings. You can use Google as a starting point and develop the list as you use more specialized resources and discover different terms used in your selected area of law.

Other helpful sources to get you started on a topic are current awareness tools, discussed on the next tab in this box.