Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

Empirical methods are increasingly used in legal research and practice. This course covers a broad range of topics, including descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing and statistical analysis and interpretation. We will cover how and when to apply particular models, access, clean, merge datasets, analyze, interpret, report data and create tables and graphs using Stata statistical software. No background in Stata will be assumed.

The course will culminate with an empirical paper where you will get an opportunity to practice what you learn during the semester and present your work to the class. Two options will be provided to the students for their final paper: (1) an empirical paper on a topic of your interest or (2) a replication paper. There is a growing awareness of the importance of replication in the empirical legal field. Producing or reproducing an empirical work will give students an opportunity to learn the methods used, data wrangling, or challenges and solutions that researchers encounter producing empirical work. Students who are replicating will be required to extend the study either by proposing or implementing (desired but not required) a change to the original study through use of additional variables, different time periods/techniques/robustness checks, etc.