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Legal Research Strategy: Legal Research Strategy

Legal Research Strategy

About This Guide

This guide will walk a beginning researcher though the legal research process step-by-step. This guide was reproduced from the Guide Legal Research Strategy by AJ Blechner at Harvard Law School Library. Some resources mentioned may not be available to WWU students. 

How to Strategize

Legal research must be comprehensive and precise.  One contrary source that you miss may invalidate other sources you plan to rely on.  Sticking to a strategy will save you time, ensure completeness, and improve your work product. 

Follow These Steps

Running Time: 3 minutes, 13 seconds.

If you get stuck at any time during the process, these may help:

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Elizabeth Stephan
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Preliminary Analysis

Understanding the Legal Questions

A legal question often originates as a problem or story about a series of events. In law school, these stories are called fact patterns. In practice, facts may arise from a manager or an interview with a potential client. Start by doing the following:

Read > Analyze > Assess > Note > Generate
  • Read anything you have been given
  • Analyze the facts and frame the legal issues
  • Assess what you know and need to learn
  • Note the jurisdiction and any primary law you have been given
  • Generate potential search terms

Jurisdiction

Legal rules will vary depending on where geographically your legal question will be answered. You must determine the jurisdiction in which your claim will be heard. These resources can help you learn more about jurisdiction and how it is determined:

This map indicates which states are in each federal appellate circuit:

A Map of the United States with Each Appellate Court Jurisdiction

Organization

Getting Started

Once you have begun your research, you will need to keep track of your work. Logging your research will help you to avoid missing sources and explain your research strategy. You will likely be asked to explain your research process when in practice. Researchers can keep paper logs, folders on Westlaw or Lexis, or online citation management platforms.

Running Time: 3 minutes, 56 seconds.
 

Tracking with Paper or Excel

Many researchers create their own tracking charts.  Be sure to include:

  • Search Date
  • Topics/Keywords/Search Strategy
  • Citation to Relevant Source Found
  • Save Locations
  • Follow Up Needed

Consider using the following research log as a starting place: 

Using Zotero

For long term projects, Zotero might be useful. It's a good tool to keep your research well organized. Note, however, that none of these platforms substitute for doing your own proper Bluebook citations. Learn more about citation management software on our other research guides:

Secondary Sources

Types of Sources

There are three different types of sources: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.  When doing legal research you will be using mostly primary and secondary sources.  We will explore these different types of sources in the sections below.

Graph Showing Types of Legal Research Resources.  Tertiary Sources: Hollis, Law Library Website.  Secondary Sources:  Headnotes & Annotations, American Law Reports, Treatises, Law Reviews & Journals, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, Restatements.  Primary Sources: Constitutions, Treatises, Statutes, Regulations, Case Decisions, Ordinances, Jury Instructions.

Secondary sources often explain legal principles more thoroughly than a single case or statute. Starting with them can help you save time.

Secondary sources are particularly useful for:

  • Learning the basics of a particular area of law
  • Understanding key terms of art in an area
  • Identifying essential cases and statutes

Consider the following when deciding which type of secondary source is right for you:

  • Scope/Breadth
  • Depth of Treatment
  • Currentness/Reliability

 

Chart Illustrating Depth and Breadth of Secondary Sources by Type.  Legal Dictionaries (Shallow and Broad), Legal Encyclopedias (Shallow and Broad), Restatements (Moderately Deep and Broad), Treatises (Moderately Deep and Moderately Narrow), American Law Reports (Extremely Deep and Extremely Narrow), Law Journal Articles (Extremely Deep and Extremely Narrow)

 

 

Legal Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Legal Dictionaries

Legal dictionaries are similar to other dictionaries that you have likely used before.

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics, providing introductions and explaining terms of art. They also provide citations to primary law and relevant major law review articles.  

Graph illustrating that Legal Encyclopedias have broad coverage of subject matter and content with shallow treatment of the topics.
Legal encyclopedias cover a broad range of topics superficially.

 

Treatises

Treatises are books on legal topics.  These books are a good place to begin your research.  They provide explanation, analysis, and citations to the most relevant primary sources. Treatises range from single subject overviews to deep treatments of broad subject areas.

Graph illustrating that Treatises are moderate in scope and relatively deep.
Treatises typically cover a single legal subject area deeply.

 

It is important to check the date when the treatise was published. Many are either not updated, or are updated through the release of newer editions.

Law Reviews & Journals

Law reviews are scholarly publications, usually edited by law students in conjunction with faculty members. They contain both lengthy articles and shorter essays by professors and lawyers. They also contain comments, notes, or developments in the law written by law students. Articles often focus on new or emerging areas of law and may offer critical commentary. Some law reviews are dedicated to a particular topic while others are general. Occasionally, law reviews will include issues devoted to proceedings of panels and symposia.

Graph illustrating that Law Review and Journal articles are extremely narrow in scope but exceptionally deep.

Law review and journal articles are extremely narrow and deep with extensive references. 

To find law review articles visit:

Primary Sources

Primary Authority

Primary authority is "authority that issues directly from a law-making body."  Authority, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).   Sources of primary authority include:

  • Constitutions
  • Statutes 
  • Regulations
  • Case Law

Access to primary legal sources is available through:

Statutes

Statutes (also called legislation) are "laws enacted by legislative bodies", such as Congress and state legislatures. Statute, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

We typically start primary law research here. If there is a controlling statute, cases you look for later will interpret that law. There are two types of statutes, annotated and unannotated.

Annotated codes are a great place to start your research. They combine statutory language with citations to cases, regulations, secondary sources, and other relevant statutes. This can quickly connect you to the most relevant cases related to a particular law. Unannotated Codes provide only the text of the statute without editorial additions. Unannotated codes, however, are more often considered official and used for citation purposes.

Running Time: 4 minutes.
 

For a deep dive on federal and state statutes, visit: Statutes: US and State Code (from Harvard Law School Library) 

Want to learn more about the history or legislative intent of a law?  Learn how to get started here:

Regulations

Regulations are rules made by executive departments and agencies. Not every legal question will require you to search regulations. However, many areas of law are affected by regulations. So make sure not to skip this step if they are relevant to your question.

Running Time: 3 minutes, 48 seconds.
 

To learn more about working with regulations, visit: Administrative Law Research (Harvard Law School Library)

Case Basics

In many areas, finding relevant caselaw will comprise a significant part of your research. This Is particularly true in legal areas that rely heavily on common law principles.

 

Running Time: 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

Unpublished Cases

Up to  86% of federal case opinions are unpublished. You must determine whether your jurisdiction will consider these unpublished cases as persuasive authority. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure have an overarching rule, Rule 32.1  Each circuit also has local rules regarding citations to unpublished opinions. You must understand both the Federal Rule and the rule in your jurisdiction.

 

Each state also has its own local rules which can often be accessed through:

Finding Cases

You can browse and search for case law by subject, citation, or using keywords.  To maximize your time, identify important cases using a secondary source.

Headnotes

Headnotes show the key legal points in a case. Legal databases use these headnotes to guide researchers to other cases on the same topic. They also use them to organize concepts explored in cases by subject. Publishers, like LexisNexis, create headnotes, so they are not consistent across databases.

In Nexis, headnotes are listed after the Case Summary. If you want to know more about a specific headnote, click on "Shepardize - Narrow by this headnote" to search for cases related to that headnote. 

Start by identifying a relevant topic in a digest.  Then you can limit those results to your jurisdiction for more relevant results.  Sometimes, you can keyword search within only the results on your topic in your jurisdiction.  This is a particularly powerful research method.

One Good Case Method

You can use good cases you find to locate other cases addressing the same topic. These other cases often apply similar rules to a range of diverse fact patterns. The video below is from Harvard Law Library and references databases Western doesn't have. You can do similar searches in NexisUni (from LexisNexis).

Running Time: 4 minutes, 11 seconds.

Updating Research (Shepardizing)

Ways to Use Citators

A citator is "a catalogued list of cases, statutes, and other legal sources showing the subsequent history and current precedential value of those sources.  Citators allow researchers to verify the authority of a precedent and to find additional sources relating to a given subject." Citator, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

Each major legal database has its own citator.  The two most popular are Keycite on Westlaw and Shepard's on Lexis. We have access to Shepard's through NexisUni

Making Sure Your Case is Still Good Law

This video answers common questions about citators. This video is from Harvard Law Library and references two databases, LexisNexis (Shepardize) and Westlaw (KeyCite). We have access to Shepardize through NexisUni)

Running Time: 6 minutes, 26 seconds.

Using Citators For

Citators serve three purposes: (1) case validation, (2) better understanding, and (3) additional research. 

Case Validation

Is my case or statute good law?

Look for:

  • Parallel citations
  • Prior and subsequent history
  • Negative treatment suggesting you should no longer cite to holding.

Better Understanding

Has the law in this area changed?

Look for:

  • Later cases on the same point of law
  • Positive treatment, explaining or expanding the law.
  • Negative Treatment, narrowing or distinguishing the law.

Track Research

Who is citing and writing about my case or statute?

Look for:

  • Secondary sources that discuss your case or statute.
  • Cases in other jurisdictions that discuss your case or statute.

Identifying an End Point

Knowing When to Start Writing

Running Time: 2 minutes, 28 seconds.

 

For more guidance on when to stop your research see:

CC License

CC License

Creative Commons License

The Legal Research Guide is based on the guide created by AJ Blechner, Student Services Research Librarian & Instructional Designer and licensed by Harvard Law Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

You may reproduce any part of it for noncommercial purposes as long as credit is included and it is shared in the same manner.