National Center for State Courts: links and Court Structure Charts for all 50 states plus DC and territories.
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).
Before finishing this step, make sure to answer the question: is my research topic Statutory or Common Law?
Secondary sources are the best place to go next. Period.
Gather and read (actually read) the relevant cases you’ve found:
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:
There are organizational tools in Westlaw and Lexis Advance:
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).
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–
See the Citators tab in this guide.
It can be hard to know when you have completed your research. Some signs you might consider: