How to do Legal Research in Law School

Question: What is “Legal Research?”

Answer: Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making.

Question: So why do it?

Answer: Support legal decision-making:

• COMPLEX legal issues
• Applied to SPECIFIC facts
• Requiring COMPLETE answers
• For clients that PAY for your expertise

The Legal Research Process is based upon The Legal Research Pyramid

Starting on the Open Web such as Google and/or bing. This is a good place to start but:

• Not specific enough
• Rarely authoritative (can’t cite to Google in court)
• Credibility of sources is always a question

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• Collapse All

• Step #1:Legal Research Process  

  • Secondary Sources: Sources of information that describe or interpret the law, such as legal treatises, law review articles, and other scholarly legal writings, cited by lawyers to persuade a court to reach a particular decision in a case, but which the court is not obligated to follow.
  • Why Start with a Secondary Source?
    • Don’t reinvent the wheel
    • Learn from Legal Experts
    • Get most important authority
    • Read important background information
  • What Will I Obtain?
    • Treatises
    • Practice Guides
    • Annotations & Digests
    • Law Reviews & Journals  

• Step #2:Legal Research Process  

  • Primary Sources : A document that establishes the law on a particular issue, such as a case decision or legislative act.
  • Why Use Primary Sources?
    • Authoritative
    • Precedential
    • Controlling
  • What Will I Obtain?
    • Cases
    • Statutes
    • Regulations

• Step #3: Legal Research Process  

  • Shepardizing®: The process of consulting Shepard's® to see if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or cited by later cases.
  • Why Shepardize®?
    • Your research needs to be “Good Law”
    • You can’t use reversed or overruled authority
  •  What Will I Obtain?
    • See “Precedential Value”
    • Shows if authority is overruled
    • Ensures research is “Good Law”

• Step #4: Rinse & Repeat?  

  • Law is Always Changing
  • Legal research is never done
  • Need to update your research as the law evolves
  • Don’t find out your research is obsolete from opposing counsel