Legal Research

This lesson provides an overview of the branches of the U.S. government and how each branch makes law.

This lesson is designed to help law students develop their abilities to handle legal research assignments. Students who have some experience doing legal research or who have completed their first year legal research course will benefit the most. Legal Research Methodology may also be used to supplement the learning process for students studying legal research for the first time.

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 is designed for students taking an introductory legal research course who are already somewhat familiar with online research on Westlaw and Lexis. This lesson should be useful for students with basic or intermediate searching knowledge and experience.

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.

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.

Choosing the most appropriate sources for your research need is a crucial part of of research strategy. Differentiating between free or fee-based electronic legal research sources is important for efficient and cost-effective research, as is recognizing when it is beneficial to use print legal research sources.

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 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 examines the ethical issues associated with, and tools available for, researching parties, witnesses, and jurors on social media sites.

This series of exercises is designed to help the user recognize whether an issue involves federal or state legal issues, and to select legal research sources appropriate to the jurisdiction and the applicable law. This exercise assumes that the user has a basic knowledge of legal research sources.

This is an introductory lesson on federal and state statutes to acquaint first-year law students with this important form of law. The lesson focuses on the basic structure of statutes and the sources in which they appear. It doesn't describe how to research statutes, but you'll learn statutory research much more easily if you understand this material first.

The four forms of federal statutory publications are slip laws, session laws (or advance session laws), Codes, and Annotated Codes. As a researcher, you will most frequently use an Annotated Code for accessing federal law. It is, however, important to understand each stage of federal legislative publication and the implications for research.

This lesson is designed to give you an introduction to the intricacies of federal statutory publication. You should understand how the different forms are interconnected as well as the differences between them by the completion of this lesson.

This lesson will introduce you to how codes are created, how they're organized, how they're published, and what it all means for your legal research. It is intended for first-year law and graduate students, or anyone who needs a refresher on the basics of this topic.

This lesson assumes that you are familiar with how statutes are passed and how they're first published, either from your own knowledge or from the CALI Lesson "Introduction to State and Federal Statutes."

For one of the questions in this lesson, you should have your Bluebook or ALWD Citation Manual handy.

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 take you through the process of updating statutes. It is an advanced lesson that builds on concepts developed in the CALI lessons, Introduction to State and Federal Statutes and Codification. This lesson assumes a basic understanding of statutes including how they are created and codified.

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 exercise will provide the student with a detailed introduction to using the digests to find case law. Example pages from the West reporters and digests are provided and hypothetical research issues are demonstrated to show how these books are used.

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 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 cover how to conduct legal research about the constitutions of individual states, online and in print.

Through this introductory lesson, students will learn how federal laws are made and about the federal legislative process. Students will also learn about the various types of documents that are created as a proposed bill works its way through Congress. These documents comprise the legislative history of an enacted law.

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 will teach students how to research and efficiently locate rules and regulations promulgated by federal administrative agencies. The lesson addresses the official sources of federal administrative regulations: the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and their related materials.

This lesson will introduce you to the quasi-legislative process known as rulemaking. It will familiarize you with the publication system and with the sources you will access to research regulations. The lesson includes several images of Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations pages, and links to regulatory information on the Government Publishing Office's homepage. The lesson is designed to augment a substantive Administrative Law Course or an Advanced Legal Research class.

This lesson will introduce you to methods of finding and updating federal executive orders. It assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, and is therefore appropriate for any student or legal professional who needs to learn how to research federal executive orders. Knowledge of the C.F.R. and the Federal Register is helpful for understanding this lesson.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the user with the range of documents produced by the Federal government, where they can be found, and how they can be used in a law practice.

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 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.

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 is an introduction to the American Law Reports (ALR) and is intended for use by students in introductory legal research classes. The goal is to give you an understanding of the features of the resource, the best methods for using it, and an understanding of when to use it. The lesson covers both print and electronic formats of ALR.

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 lesson introduces students to subject specific treatises, a type of secondary resource particularly helpful when conducting legal research in an unfamiliar area of law.

This lesson will teach you how to use all the major legal citators - Shepard's in print, Shepard's on Lexis, KeyCite on Westlaw and BCite on Bloomberg Law - to locate additional useful cases when starting with one case or other document, and to find secondary resources such as law reviews when starting with a case or other document.

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.

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 introduce you to the process of researching federal agency decisions. You should expect to encounter: overview of agency regulatory powers; types of agency decisions; how to find them; how to update them; and their precedential value.

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

This lesson will teach students about practice centers, and describe their origins as print legal looseleaf services. Students will use a hypothetical to explore the Practice Centers available on Bloomberg Law BNA, and Thomson Reuters' RIA Checkpoint.

Designed to help bridge the gap between law school and law practice, this tutorial introduces students to commonly-used current awareness tools and alerting services. The lesson covers sources and strategies for finding topical newsletter services, blogs, email discussion lists, and scholarship repositories and instructs on how to use subscription alert services to keep up with the latest developments in a particular area of law.

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

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

The goal of this lesson is to introduce you to the basics of conducting company and industry research. Company research is the process of gathering information about a specific company. Once you have information about a company, you may need to know how that company is faring within its industry. Companies within an industry can be compared to one another, or an analysis of the industry itself can be done to see how it is performing.

This lesson gives the basics of copyright and trademark research, including historical background, statutes, regulations, cases, secondary sources, international materials, and current awareness tools.

This lesson covers the basics of how to research U.S. patent law. It covers both print and online resources, and gives you a thorough introduction to the primary sources of patent law. It also demonstrates the various types of secondary resources that can be useful when researching patent law.

This lesson on federal tax research covers the legislative, administrative, and judicial materials used in the specialized area of tax law. A basic knowledge of primary sources such as statutes, regulations, and cases; secondary sources such as treatises, law reviews, newsletters, citators, digests, and periodical indexes is assumed. Federal taxation is a specialized field with many publications devoted solely to federal taxes.

This lesson covers researching medical information. It emphasizes resources that are publicly available free of charge.

This lesson will introduce the student to researching legal ethics. 

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 will introduce you to researching foreign law.

The purpose of this lesson is to provide an introduction to customary law systems and to offer suggestions for researching the laws of countries where customary law is still being practiced.

This lesson will introduce you to the civil law tradition and discuss research in civil law historical sources. The lesson covers the five major types of world legal systems, explains the current and historical sources of the civil law, and discusses the importance of historical sources in civil law research and interpretation.

This lesson provides an overview of the history and structure of the European Union, followed by an introduction to researching European Union documents, specifically EU treaties, regulations, directives, and opinions of the European Court of Justice. The European Union is a truly unique structure which represents over half a century of cooperation between select nations.

The definition and location of customary international law is a difficult research task. This lesson begins by defining customary international law and placing customary international law into context through historical examples. Two research strategies for locating custom will be introduced. The first strategy is to locate pre-defined custom using a source that discusses state practice that has risen to the level of custom. The second and more complex strategy involves searching directly for evidence of customary international law.

In this lesson, you will learn about the International Court of Justice, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. After an introduction to the Court, you'll learn about some of the print reporters of the Court's decisions and online sources for these opinions. Finally, there will be a discussion of print and online digests of the Court's decisions.

This lesson will show you the basic tools for finding United Nations materials. It first gives an overview of how the United Nations is organized. It includes descriptions of each of the principal organs of the U.N. and an overview of the United Nations document numbering system. It then shows online tools for United Nations research: the U.N.'s website; the Official Document System; and the U.N. Digital Library.

This is an introduction to researching the law relating to intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies. IGOs and NGOs have significant input into international law and finding their resources can be integral to researching international law.

This lesson will give you some background about Regional Organizations, collections of countries, organized by region, engaged in collaborative work toward some common goal. You will learn to find the documents of some of the most important Regional Organizations on the web.

This lesson is a general introduction to resources and strategies for researching tribunals and truth commissions.

This is an introductory lesson for international human rights law and research.

The purpose of this lesson is to guide students who are not experienced in researching private international law. After providing some background on the definition and sources of private international law, this lesson will suggest the initial and follow-up steps that a researcher of a typical issue related to private international law generally should take.

This lesson will acquaint you with the sources of international environmental law, and give you strategies for researching it.

This lesson will familiarize the user with Alabama's primary sources, including the state constitution, statutes, administrative regulations, and case law. Among other things, this lesson addresses how a bill becomes law in Alabama, five ways to find Alabama statutes, and six ways to find Alabama cases with the West Digest System. The lesson discusses print and online sources, including researching primary law with free online services. This lesson does not cover secondary sources, such as treatises and law review articles.

This lesson will familiarize you with secondary sources covering Alabama law. This lesson supplements the lesson on Alabama primary sources. You will learn about finding aids for researching secondary sources and explore both online and print tools available to access those materials.

This lesson shows how to research Alaskan state law. Topics include statutes and codes, administrative law, ethics rules, the court system, secondary sources, and cases. Using a hypothetical research problem, the lesson walks through efficient ways to find answers.

This lesson is designed to familiarize students with Arizona's primary legal sources. It will also provide a basic understanding of how to use these sources in conducting legal research. No prerequisite knowledge is required to use this lesson.

This lesson introduces students to secondary resources for Arizona legal researchers.

This lesson covers the Arkansas constitution, statutes, legislative history, cases, courts and court rules, and administrative materials. It was designed for those who have a general knowledge of researching primary legal sources.

This lesson will introduce you to all of the types of primary sources you will encounter when researching California law. Topics include the Constitution, Statutes and Codes, administrative law, court system, and researching cases in California. No prior knowledge of California legal materials is required.

This lesson will serve as an introduction to some of the secondary resources available in the field of California law.

This lesson will help you master legal citations using the California Style Manual, Fourth Edition (hereinafter "Manual").

This lesson will instruct students about issues associated with California ballot measures including locating documents, identifying legislative intent, and examining legal challenges.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the user with Colorado primary legal research materials.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the user with Colorado secondary legal research materials. The lesson focuses on secondary source material including: Colorado Practice, treatises, periodicals, CLEs and form books. No prior knowledge of Colorado legal research is necessary to follow this lesson. While this lesson is aimed primarily at first year law students who will be learning about these materials for the first time, each section may be used independently to brush up on Colorado-specific legal research skills.

This lesson is meant to provide you with an introduction to Connecticut primary legal materials. After you have completed this lesson, you will have a better understanding of where to find and how to use Connecticut primary law materials, including case law, statutes, and regulations.

This lesson reviews the secondary legal research resources available for Delaware.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the reader with legal research materials in the District of Columbia. The lesson focuses on primary sources such as statutes, cases, agency regulations, and decisions.

This lesson introduces Florida primary legal resources including the Florida Constitution, statutes, court decisions, Florida administrative law and Florida attorney general opinions.

This lesson introduces the various types of secondary sources available to research Florida law.

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.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the reader with Georgia legal research materials and will focus on Georgia's secondary source material. You will learn about finding aids for researching secondary source materials and explore both hard cover and online tools to access secondary source materials.

This lesson provides an introduction to Illinois focused secondary sources. The reader will learn how to use these sources in both print and digital formats.

This lesson will introduce you to the basic sources for finding primary law in Indiana, and how to use them.

This is a lesson on Kentucky primary and secondary legal research.

This lesson provides a thorough overview of Louisiana Primary Legal Resources. It covers resources that will be familiar to legal researchers from other jurisdictions and examines resources that are unique to Louisiana.

Louisiana is a mixed legal jurisdiction with strong ties to French and Spanish Civil Law. There are differences between the civil law practiced in Louisiana and the common law practiced in the other 49 states. Although some of those differences have been bridged, some of the secondary materials discussed in this lesson vary greatly from the secondary materials of other jurisdictions.

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 introduces Nebraska primary legal materials, focusing on the Legislative and Judicial branches.

This lesson covers Nebraska secondary legal materials. As you work your way through this lesson, you will discover the role secondary resources play in the legal research process and develop the skills required to find relevant secondary materials.

This lesson is an overview of the sources for finding and updating Nevada legal materials. Also, it describes materials used in Nevada Legal Research.

This lesson is intended to acquaint students with basic information regarding sources of primary law in New York state: case law, statutes and regulations. It can be used to supplement instruction in introductory Research and Writing courses or as a freestanding introduction to doing New York legal research.

This lesson will familiarize you with primary and secondary sources available in North Dakota. It covers North Dakota primary law including the North Dakota Constitution, statutes, legislative history, municipal codes, administrative law and court decisions. The secondary sources section of the lesson provides a general overview of secondary sources and how you can use them in your research as well as coverage of North Dakota specific secondary sources.

The purpose of this lesson is to familiarize the learner with Ohio legal research materials. The lesson will focus on primary source materials in Ohio, including case law, statutes, administrative materials, and court rules.

This lesson teaches Ohio citation as governed by the Supreme Court of Ohio's recently published guide, Writing Manual: A Guide to Citations, Style and Judicial Opinion Writing (the "Writing Manual"). This lesson covers only the material contained in part I of the Writing Manual, which the lesson will refer to as the Citation Manual.

This lesson will prepare you to research primary law in Oklahoma.

This lesson provides an introduction into Oregon legal research sources and methods. Using a hypothetical about recreational marijuana, the lesson shows you how to research Oregon law.

This lesson will provide an interactive overview of Pennsylvania Primary Resources. Follow Will Penn as he learns to research Pennsylvania's Constitution, Statutes, Legislative History, Administrative Regulations, Case Law, Citators, Court Rules & Briefs.

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.

In the process of legal research, primary authority is the law in your jurisdiction, which comes directly from a legislative body, court, or administrative agency.

This lesson on South Carolina primary source materials covers the South Carolina Constitution; South Carolina state and local laws (Legislative); South Carolina administrative agency regulations and other executive materials (Executive); and, South Carolina appellate court rules and decisions (Judicial).

This lesson will describe and explain how to use South Carolina Secondary Sources. No prior experience is required to complete this lesson. You will learn the various types of secondary source available to you.

This lesson covers secondary resources useful for Texas-specific research including the state legal encyclopedia, state treatises, state practice materials, state form books, and state legal periodicals. Popular resources such as Texas Jurisprudence III and Dorsaneo's will be covered. This lesson also contains information on searching Texas library catalogs and research guides.

This lesson provides instruction on conducting Utah legal research using both primary and secondary sources.

This lesson explains how to research Vermont state law. Topics include cases, statutes and legislative history, administrative law, as well as legal ethics and current awareness resources. Using a hypothetical research problem, the lesson walks through efficient ways to find answers.

This lesson is an introduction to researching Virginia law using secondary sources.

This lesson is designed to introduce students to Washington's primary law: cases, statutes, and regulations. Although the lesson can be used as a standalone tool, it can also be used to supplement other forms of instruction such as classroom lectures or demonstrations. The questions provide students with ongoing feedback as they learn.

This lesson provides a general review of legal research and an introduction to Wyoming primary and secondary resources.

This is an introductory lesson on Canadian legal research. This particular lesson treats research techniques and sources from the perspective that you are faced with a statute based problem. A second separate lesson treats Canadian legal research from the perspective that you have a case based problem. The lessons assume no knowledge of the areas, but treat basic research in Canadian federal statutes, administrative material, and cases.

This is an introductory lesson on Canadian legal research. This particular lesson treats research techniques and sources from the perspective that you are faced with a case based problem. A second separate lesson treats Canadian legal research from the perspective that you have a statute based problem. The lessons assume no knowledge of the areas, but treat basic research in Canadian federal statutes, administrative material, and cases.

This lesson covers punctuation and some key points of grammar every law student should know. Getting these key rules down will keep you from losing credibility with your legal-writing teacher, employers, clients, and judges.

Most students do all right with commas, periods, sentence fragments, and verb agreement. But what about colons, dashes, passive voice, and parallelism? This lesson covers several advanced topics in grammar and punctuation for the legal writer who is ready to move beyond the basics.

The purpose of this exercise is to help students—especially first-year students—understand the process of legal analysis and improve their legal writing and legal analysis skills. Specifically, students will work on their ability to apply the law to the facts of a problem.

This lesson introduces a modern approach to writing issue statements for traditional memos and briefs. The lesson steers users away from single-sentence issue statements. It bases much of its approach on the syllogism.

This lesson is designed to cover how to distinguish legally relevant facts, contextually relevant facts, and nonrelevant facts; plus, how to use each of those types of facts. It is also designed to cover beginning and organizing a statement of facts, writing facts briefly and readably, stating facts objectively, and stating facts persuasively.

This is an exercise designed to introduce first-semester law and graduate students to the basic elements of a typical case "brief" and to teach them general methodology for writing their own briefs. The exercise consists of three parts: (1) an introduction to the purposes and uses of a case brief; (2) a detailed examination of each of the ten components of a typical case brief (with examples); and (3) two actual cases that students are asked to read and then to brief, using the methodology described in this exercise. A sample brief for each of the two cases is also provided, thereby allowing students to correct and modify their briefs by way of comparison.

A large percentage of litigation arising out of contracts results from poor drafting. In order to eliminate this litigation, it is imperative that students and legal professionals master good drafting skills. One of the most important aspects of drafting a contract is the operative language--language that affects legal relationships. This lesson is designed to introduce law students to operative language commonly used in drafting contracts, in particular, language of obligation (shall), language of authorization (may) and language of condition precedent (must).

Drafters of contracts, wills and statutes are plagued with the ambiguities inherent in the use of these two connectors. This lesson is designed to identify these ambiguities and then help students to draft with conjunctions which eliminate those ambiguities.

This exercise is to help users learn the rules of proper citation form for briefs and legal memoranda. It does not deal with proper citation form for law review footnotes. It is divided into three sections: Section A deals with cases, B with statutory materials and C with secondary authorities.

Plagiarism in today's online social media world is both confusing and serious, especially for students of the law. This lesson will explain what constitutes plagiarism, distinguish between copyright and plagiarism, and offer opportunities for students to test their understanding of plagiarism.