1  Frame Issues and Terms

• Read what you’ve been given.
• Analyze the facts and frame your legal issues.
• Generate potential search terms.
  • ... try a law dictionary for generating search terms

 2  Identify Jurisdiction and Sources of Mandatory Authority

• State or federal law?
• What courts’ opinions will be mandatory authority?

Federal

• click map above for court locator and links to courts' websites
• more about the federal system's Court Role and Structure

California

• click map above for links to Courts of Appeal websites
• more About California Courts

Other States

National Center for State Courts: links and Court Structure Charts for all 50 states plus DC and territories.

 3  Get an Overview and Determine Source of Law

Free online legal research sources are a fine place to start. However, if you spend more than 10-15 minutes on general web searching without retrieving satisfying results, move to Step 4 (secondary sources).

• Use your generated search terms and jurisdiction name in a general web search: Google or Wikipedia.
• If you don’t already know whether your research topic is statutory or common law, use these general free sources to figure it out.
• Before clicking on hits, assess their credibility - ___.gov sites, ___.edu sites, Justia.com, nolo.com and FindLaw.com tend to be credible.

Before finishing this step, make sure to answer the question: is my research topic Statutory or Common Law?

• Does a statute control?
• If there is no statute on point, only caselaw, then this is a common law topic.
• Cautionary note! In your 1L LRW and WOA courses, your research topics will be either statutory or common law. Beyond the 1L year, be on the lookout for administrative/regulatory legal issues as well. Justia.com provides a short overview on Administrative Law (focusing on the federal system).
• Find out about other overview resources to help you determine the source of law.
• If you cannot easily answer this question, move to a secondary source (Step 4).

 4  Consult Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are the best place to go next. Period.

• If you’re researching a statutory problem, use secondary sources to confirm that you’re reading the statute correctly and to find cases and related statutes. (See the Secondary Sources tab in this guide.)
  • Then you can move on to the Annotated Code / Notes of Decisions. (See the Statutory Research tab in this guide.)
• If you’re researching a common law problem, use secondary sources to learn the legal rule and to find cases. (See the Secondary Sources tab in this guide.)
• Remember: secondary sources provide both a description of the law and citations to relevant cases.

 5  Gather and Read Primary Authority

Gather and read (actually read) the relevant cases you’ve found:

• Do not just rely on the head notes or the case summary. Do not just skim the parts of the case that look helpful.
• This is a time-consuming step – there is no shortcut and no real substitute for your own intellectual effort here.
• Repeated references to the same cases or other authority are a good thing – it’s a sign you’re in the right place.

How do you decide whether a case is useful – i.e., if it is a “good” case? This is one of the harder steps in legal research. It will take time, patience, and judgment. Here is a brief checklist to get you started:

• Is the case mandatory (see Step 2)? If not mandatory, is it particularly helpful in some other way? (e.g., Is it more factually analogous than any mandatory cases?)
• Is the case current?
• Is the case published (is the case included in a state case reporter or federal case reporter)?
• Does the case focus on the specific legal issue that is most relevant to your client’s case?
• Are the case facts close enough to allow you to meaningfully analogize or distinguish from your client’s facts?

 6  Select Cases and Fill Gaps

• The “One Good Case" Method: once you’ve found one good case, use your citators to KeyCite or Shepardize that case. That will lead you to more good cases. (See the Citator tab in this guide.)
• The Gap-Filling Method: Ask yourself what is still missing from the body of caselaw you’ve found.
  • Is there little or no mandatory caselaw on a specific issue? If no, consider gap-filling with persuasive caselaw.
  • Do you need more cases that are distinguishable on the facts, to help you tease out a counter-analysis?
  • Do you need cases that are more recent?
  • In this step, you can use a Citator (see the Citator tab in this guide), or craft specialized searches on Westlaw or Lexis+ using specific search terms, dates, and jurisdictions. (To craft really precise searches, use "terms & connectors" searches - Westlaw and Lexis+ each offer guides.)

 7  Stay Organized

There are organizational tools in Westlaw and Lexis Advance:

• organize useful cases or other authorities in folders - Westlaw Using Folders to Organize Your Research; Lexis+ Folder Basics
• text tools - highlight portions of text with your mouse to add notes/highlighting, or to copy with citation information
• bookmark favorite resources or searches in your search history

Actually print out the key authorities you plan to use in the drafting process. Having copies at your fingertips will make it easier to to use your key authorities in the cyclical, iterative process of analysis, research, and drafting.

You can also use a table or spreadsheet to track authorities and issues, searches and terminology, or other details of your research - make your own document or use one of these downloadable templates (Word).

 8  Update the Law

Citators are among the most useful research tools. The main legal citators are available only on Westlaw and Lexis Advance. Citators can help you do three things–

• ensure your case is still good law;
• determine to what extent other courts are relying on your case; and
• find more cases (see Step 6)

See the Citators tab in this guide.

 9  Conclude Your Research

It can be hard to know when you have completed your research. Some signs you might consider:

• You have gone through all of the above steps thoroughly.
• Cases and other authorities all cite back to each other.
• Further research does not add to your understanding of the issues.
• You have consulted a librarian or other research expert to see if there are additional secondary sources or other resources to check.