PLA2114 – Legal Research and Writing II is a 3-credit course building on introductory legal research and taking students into the documents a paralegal actually produces. It is required of paralegal and legal assisting majors at Florida institutions and, at several, it satisfies Gordon Rule writing requirements — a meaningful signal about how much writing it involves.
Where the first research course teaches students to find authority, this one teaches them to use it: analyzing a problem, locating and validating the governing law, and producing a written document that a supervising attorney can rely on.
The core is the legal memorandum. Students learn to state an issue precisely, apply the IRAC structure (issue, rule, application, conclusion) or its variants, synthesize a rule from multiple authorities, analogize and distinguish cases on their facts, and reach a conclusion that is predictive rather than persuasive — an internal memo tells the attorney what the law is, not what the client wants it to be. Students who cannot resist advocating in a memo are the ones instructors work hardest on.
From there the course covers persuasive writing: trial briefs, memoranda in support of and opposition to motions, and appellate briefs, with attention to how the same analysis is framed differently when the audience is a court rather than a supervising attorney.
Substantial time goes to drafting: pleadings, discovery requests and responses, correspondence, and other litigation documents, using Florida forms and rules.
Advanced research continues throughout — validating authority with citators, statutory and regulatory research, legislative history, and efficient use of Westlaw and Lexis. Florida citation under Rule 9.800, Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure is covered alongside the Bluebook or ALWD, because Florida practice uses its own citation rule.
Offered at approximately 17 Florida institutions with paralegal programs.
Florida legal employment is concentrated in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, with government legal work concentrated in Tallahassee. Writing quality is the single most common differentiator employers cite when hiring paralegals.
This course is published under several forms across Florida. State College of Florida and Seminole State use PLA2114 Legal Research and Writing II; St. Petersburg College titles it Advanced Legal Research and Writing; Broward College carries PLA2114C Legal Writing and Drafting with an integrated lab component. Under SCNS the same number at the same level is equivalent regardless of title, but the C designation and the differing titles mean students should confirm which form their program requires.
Prerequisites vary; verify locally. State College of Florida requires PLA1104 (Law Library / Legal Research) and PLA1730; Broward requires ENC1101, PLA1003, and PLA1104C each with a minimum grade of C. The introductory research course is universally prerequisite — this course assumes students can already find authority.
Worth knowing for degree planning. Florida's Gordon Rule requires specified coursework with substantial writing, and PLA2114 carries that designation at institutions including State College of Florida. That means the course involves a defined volume of graded writing and that a minimum grade may be required for the designation to apply. Students should confirm both the designation and the grade requirement, since it affects degree audits.
The most common difficulty in this course is not research but tone. Students naturally want to write in their client's favor, and an objective memorandum requires the opposite: identifying the weaknesses in the client's position clearly enough that the attorney can plan around them. A memo that oversells a position is worse than useless, because decisions get made on it. Instructors generally spend real time on this, and students should expect to be marked down for advocacy in a document meant to be predictive.
Legal employers routinely require a writing sample and evaluate it closely. The documents produced in this course frequently become that sample. Students should treat the work as portfolio material rather than as assignments to be completed, and should keep clean copies of their best work.
Generative AI has arrived in legal practice faster than in most fields, and legal research and writing is where its strengths and its failures are both most visible. Any current version of this course needs to address it directly.
Where AI helps. Language models are useful for generating a first structural outline, suggesting search terms and alternative phrasings, summarizing a long opinion to decide whether it is relevant, explaining unfamiliar doctrine, and editing for clarity and concision. Westlaw and Lexis have both integrated AI-assisted research into their platforms, and those tools are grounded in actual databases rather than in a model's training data — a meaningful difference.
Where AI fails, and why it matters more here than almost anywhere. General-purpose language models fabricate case citations — producing plausible case names, reporter citations, and quoted holdings for decisions that do not exist. This is not hypothetical: attorneys in multiple jurisdictions have been sanctioned for filing briefs containing invented authority, and the resulting opinions are widely publicized. Models also cannot reliably determine whether a case remains good law, miss jurisdiction-specific rules, and produce analysis that reads authoritatively while being wrong. Every citation must be verified in Westlaw, Lexis, or a court's own database, and every quoted passage checked against the original.
Professional responsibility. A paralegal's work product is filed under a supervising attorney's signature, and the attorney certifies its accuracy. Submitting AI-generated authority without verification exposes the attorney to sanctions and the paralegal to termination. Several Florida courts and The Florida Bar have issued guidance on AI use; students should expect the rules to be specific and evolving.
Academic integrity. Institutional and instructor policies govern and vary. The defensible principle: AI is appropriate for structuring, searching, and editing, and inappropriate as a source of authority or as a substitute for the analysis being assessed. The skill this course teaches — reading authority, reasoning from it, and writing an argument that holds up — is precisely what a model cannot be trusted to do, and precisely what employers pay for.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026