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Legal Research Strategy and Documentation
The Right Way to Research
Legal Times Database on Westlaw
Search: ti("right way to research")
Vol. 26, No. 39
American Lawyer Media, ALM LLC
By Carolyn P. Ahearn
September 29, 2003
Research requires the poetic quality of the imagination that sees significance and relation where others are indifferent or find unrelatedness; the synthetic quality of fusing items theretofore in isolation; above all the prophetic quality of piercing the future, by knowing what questions to put and what direction to give to inquiry.
Frankfurter, "The Conditions for, and the Aims and Methods of, Legal Research," 15 Iowa L. Rev. 129, 134 (1930).
Please download the Research Strategy Checklist
- Place cursor over the Research Strategy link
- Right Click
- Save Target As
- Save to your a drive or h drive
- Print Checklist document and bring it to class
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Legal Research
- The search for information necessary to support legal decision-making.
Strategy
- A careful plan or method especially for achieving an end.
Assignment Clarification Checklist
- How will your product be used
- Why does your supervisor want to know the information
- When does your supervisor need the product
- How does your work fit into a larger deadline
- Is there a research strategy or a particular research tool that your supervisor can recommend for the project
- Is the research limited to one jurisdiction
- How much time/effort does the supervisor want expended on the project
- Does the supervisor want any of the raw research materials (cases, statutes, regulations, etc.) you relied on
- Does the supervisor have a particular length in mind for the product
- If you have additional questions once you have started the project, will your supervisor be available to answer them
Goal is Research that is:
- Correct
- Comprehensive
- Credible
- Cost-effective
When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
Wilson Mizner, 1876-1933 Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th Edition
Sources of Law
- Cases
- Statutes and Legislative History
- Administrative Law
Secondary Sources
- Legal Encyclopedias
- Treatises
- Legal Periodicals
- ALRs
- Restatements
Official and Unofficial Publications
Research Strategy
- Brainstorm for Terms
- Identify and analyze the facts
- Who, what, where, when
- TARP Rule
- Thing or subject matter
- Cause of Action or ground of defense
- Relief sought
- Parties involved
- Determine the legal issues to be researched
- Classify problem into general subject area
- Begin to narrow question
- Choose a jurisdiction
- Location of dispute
- State or Federal
- If Federal, what Circuit
- If State, what regional reporters and digest
- Get an overview of the subject
- Learn basic principles and vocabulary
- Strategy depends on familiarity with general subject and specific topics
- Consult Secondary Sources
- Outline issues
- Search for legal authority
- Organize, plan and record
- Case-finding tools
- Narrative descriptions
- Digests and annotations
- Computer-assisted legal research
- Working with a subject
- Working from a known case
- Table of Cases
- Headnotes
- Citators
- Computer Assisted Legal Research
- Working from a known statutes
- Read primary authorities
- Finding tools don't fully represent content of primary authority
- Primary authority can act as further finding tools
- Update
- Pocket parts
- Supplements
- Citators
- Computer Assisted Legal Research
- When to stop
- Repetition of citations
- Absence of new information
- Arriving at an answer
- Searching all available resources
- Research cost exceeds its expected benefit
- Use of independent research tools
He's been called a 'superlawyer' so often that he should probably wear a cape, but he hardly practices law and isn't even a registered lobbyist. "If you ever see me in the library here, tap me on the shoulder," he once told an associate at his law firm. "For you will know that I am lost."
- Vernon Jordan -
2/2/98 Newsweek 42
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