Legal Research

We are all aware of the perils of poor electronic legal research skills. And, we have all heard of ways the misuse of electronic legal resources has challenged those engaged in legal practice. Though Westlaw® and Lexis® provide us with sophisticated functionality that can ease the pain of legal research, these systems do not necessarily provide the most cost efficient means of conducting research.

This lesson will provide students with some general background on U.S. immigration law and will give an overview of tools students can use for immigration law research. Students should have a fundamental knowledge of legal research tools but do not need to have any background in immigration law to proceed with the lesson. The lesson would work best while also taking a class about immigration law.

This lesson demonstrates the ways in which internet searching can provide access to internal administrative agency materials.

This lesson will provide an understanding of the language, mechanics, and process of conducting research of U.S. treaties: the major sources of treaty texts (both official and unofficial), major indexes and finding tools, resources for updating treaties, and a basic strategy for treaty research.

This lesson introduces the student to the doctrine and processes involved in interpreting state and federal statutes. Statutes are a critical part of every substantive area of the law, so this is important background for every student, legal professional, lawyer and judge.

This lesson provides an introduction to research using primary sources of Maryland law, including case reporters and digests, statutes, legislative history, agency regulations and decisions, and attorney general opinions.

This lesson will outline some of the most common online news sources sought and how to find them.

This is an introduction to federal and state attorney general materials.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the reader with Georgia legal research materials. The lesson focuses on Georgia's primary source material including cases and digests, citators, statutes, administrative materials, court rules and ethics.

Compiled legislative histories are collections of the documents that make up the legislative history of a law. They save researchers the time and frustration of collecting the documents themselves. This lesson builds upon the CALI lesson How to Research Federal Legislative History. While it is not essential to complete that lesson first, doing so will improve your understanding of compiled legislative histories.

This lesson is about Legal Encyclopedias in print format. As one of the main types of secondary resources for legal research, Legal Encyclopedias can be useful for a variety of basic legal research tasks. This lesson will give you an overview of legal encyclopedias, explain how they are used in legal research, and run through a couple of hypotheticals. The lesson focuses on one of the two legal encyclopedias covering American Law in general - American Jurisprudence 2d (Am. Jur. 2d) - and gives some examples of state legal encyclopedias.

This lesson teaches students how to use online citators to confirm that a case is still "good law"--meaning, the case still represents existing law. This lesson focuses on the online citators of Shepard's on Lexis+ and KeyCite on Westlaw. The lesson assumes students know how to use digests and how to create a research strategy.

This lesson is intended to teach you the basic approaches to finding statutes. It is assumed that you are already familiar with the forms of statutory publication when you run this lesson. See the lessons "Introduction to State and Federal Statutes" or "Forms of Federal Statutory Publication" or "Codification" if you need to review these matters first.

This lesson will give students a basic introduction to using the Internet for legal research. Students will consider when it is appropriate to use the Internet as a research tool in legal practice. Students will then be introduced to three practical approaches to doing legal research on the Internet.

This brief lesson will familiarize the student with the basic parts of a case (i.e., the written decision of a court) published in print and on Westlaw.

This lesson will provide the student with the tools to effectively judge the content of web pages. Included in the exercise are four criteria for evaluation: authority, accuracy, comprehensiveness and currency. Each of these concepts is defined through the use of descriptive text followed by screen images of actual law-related web sites to illustrate the concepts.

This lesson walks students through the use of Pennsylvania-specific: legal encyclopedias, forms, practice materials, treatises, and legal periodicals. From how to choose the right source, to how to use them, the student will learn the basics about how secondary sources can help their research needs.

This lesson is intended as an introduction to the use of the Restatements of the Law. In this lesson students will learn what the Restatements of the Law are and why one would use them for legal research, their major features, how to search them, and how to use them to find cases.

When conducting legal research, it is frequently better to begin with secondary sources that explain and interpret the law rather than attempting to start with primary legal authority. Legal periodicals are excellent secondary source starting points. This lesson introduces strategies and resources to find legal periodicals in support of legal research projects.

This exercise begins with some general background questions to help students place administrative agencies within the greater Constitutional scheme. These questions also address the various powers agencies wield, and the ways they are created. Then the exercise examines sources that offer specific details on individual agencies; it goes on to briefly discuss procedural rules, policy statements, and the process of promulgating regulations.

This lesson will introduce you to researching foreign law.

Knowing when to stop is important for efficient and cost-effective legal research. This exercise will cover several factors which you may wish to consider.

This lesson will explain uniform laws and model codes. It provides an overview of how uniform laws and model codes are created and shows researchers how to locate uniform laws and model codes, drafters' commentary, state versions of uniform laws and model codes, and cases interpreting them.

This lesson will provide an overview of secondary resources used in legal research. Secondary resources are books and other material ABOUT legal subjects and issues: they discuss and explain primary resources such as cases and statutes and can be useful in assisting our understanding about specific areas of law. The student will learn about the different types of secondary resources and what secondary resources are most useful for specific types of legal research tasks.