To promote higher-order thinking and authentic inquiry among middle school students, I designed a hypothetical case study; the case study was between a company and the state government. Students were given a legal case centered on the concept of mass conservation, and they served as expert witnesses to investigate related concepts. Students worked in partners, and they designed experimental procedures scaffolded with sentence stems, data tables, and checklists. These scaffolding strategies allowed middle school students to access an authentic experience utilizing the scientific investigation processes. The learning objectives were directly aligned to these instructional strategies so that students understood not only what content they were expected to learn, but also recognize what skills would be built through the investigation. As a whole, these strategies altered a challenging learning experience into a purposeful, accessible problem-solving experience grounded in a realistic context.