The textbook, written for first year law students and for paralegals, or legal assistants, attempts to break down the components of legal research and writing and to identify effective starting points for these activities. It was designed for use in a classroom setting or on-the-job as a dictionary/reference source. The first part, Legal Research, contains 19 chapters which deal with the following topics: legal research in perspective, principles of legal research, kinds of law books, citations, components of a law book, finding ambiguity in the law, reading constitutional law, reading statutory law, reading regulations, reading case law, legal authority, analogizing cases, using a table of contents and an index, annotations, how to start legal researching, finding applicable constitutional law, finding applicable statutory law, finding applicable regulatory law, and finding applicable case law. The five chapters in part two, Legal Writing, cover: introduction to writing, kinds of legal writing, organization, memorandum format, and ambiguity in the hands of an effective advocate. Appended are a bibliography containing 14 items on legal research and 12 items related to writing and a subject index. (Author/MS)