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Preliminary research steps
- To begin legal research, start with jurisdiction.
- If the case is in federal court, you must find federal statutes and cases. If the case is in a state court, you must find state statutes and cases.
- Know the facts in your case.
- Identify the legal issues in the case (i.e What actions allegedly caused harm to whom? What area of law needs to be researched?)
- Match the facts and issues to areas of law that might apply. Start with general areas and narrow to specific areas or keywords.
- Create a list of keywords for your search and update the list as the search progresses.
Understanding legal sources
- There are two types of legal sources, primary and secondary.
- Cases, statutes, rules, and codes are primary sources.
- Primary sources provide authority for arguments and tell the judge what the law is.
- Appellate cases interpret and apply statutes and legal principles to particular situations.
- Dictionaries, encyclopedias, reports, law reviews, and guides are secondary sources. If you know nothing about the issues in your case, secondary sources can help you understand them better.
- Secondary sources are neither authoritative nor binding.
Analyzing results
- Determine where to search.
- If you don’t know where to start, begin with secondary sources.
- Create a list of keywords.
- Find statutes and cases that apply to the facts.
- Cornell Law and Justia are suggested for statutes and secondary sources.
- Look for information specific to your jurisdiction.
- Once you understand the topics and statutes, start looking for cases.
- Google Scholar is suggested for appellate cases in your jurisdiction.
- When you find an appropriate statute, include it in your keywords.
- Add terms or phrases you found in the statute to your list of keywords.
- Keep cases with facts similar to yours and that help your position.
- Discard cases with facts very different from yours.
- Discard cases decided on a different statute or different issues.
- Update your keywords as needed.
- Continue to search and analyze.
- When you start to see the same cases over and over, stop and read through the cases in more depth.
- Determine whether the cases answer your questions, support your position, defeat your opponent’s position, and/or interpret the statute.
- If not, continue to search.
Transcript
Hi. It\’s me, Portia, and this is lesson four of introductory legal skills.
This lesson will take you through the process of conducting legal research.
In this lesson, we\’ll cover preliminary research steps, understanding legal sources and searching and analyzing results.
To begin legal research, start with jurisdiction.
That is, if the case was filed in a federal court, you must find federal statutes and cases.
If the case was filed in a state court, you must find statutes and cases for that state\’s courts.
List the facts in your case, including those that support your own position and your opponent\’s.
Consider this example.
Plaintiff Eric and defendant Josie owned adjacent land on which they would build homes.
The year before the plaintiff built his house, the defendant, believing that a particular parcel of land was hers, improved it by installing a pipe for water, building a fence and shed, mowing, raking, planting, and otherwise keeping it in pristine condition.
When the plaintiff later had the land surveyed, he discovered that he had the title to the improved portion and brought action against the defendant for title.
Identify the legal issues in this case. What actions allegedly caused harm to whom?
What area of law needs to be researched?
Match the facts and issues to areas of law that might apply.
Start with general areas and narrow to specific areas or keywords.
You don\’t know much yet, so guess.
You can refine later.
Now develop a question that needs to be answered by each side.
Eric\’s question. The defendant improved my property without my permission. Can I keep the title?
Josie\’s question.
If I make improvements on plaintiff\’s land, can he claim it and kick me out?
Create a list of keywords for your search and update the list as the search progresses.
There are two types of legal sources, primary and secondary.
Cases, statutes, rules, and codes are primary sources.
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, reports, law reviews, and guides are secondary sources.
Statutes, rules, and codes provide authority for your arguments.
Without them, you have no support for a claim or defense.
They tell the judge what the law is.
Appellate cases in a relevant jurisdiction represent the law in context.
Like statutes, they provide authority for arguments and suggest solutions to conflict in the law.
They also interpret and apply relevant statutes, regulations, and legal principles to particular situations.
If you know nothing about the statute or issues in your case, sources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, guides, and even government reports can help. Use them to find background information on issues and topics or as supplemental information in an exhibit or footnote.
Secondary sources are good for understanding how to do something like cite cases or define a legal term.
Secondary sources are neither authoritative nor binding.
That means the judge doesn\’t have to follow them. Secondary sources are also not mandatory.
Legal searching and analysis is a winnowing down and back and forth process.
The two are done in tandem.
The process is to first determine where to search, then find statutes and cases that apply to the factual questions, analyze the cases, record the findings, review and edit keywords, and end at an appropriate point.
If you don\’t know the topics or don\’t have a case or statute to begin with, start with sources that give you broad areas and allow you to browse, like encyclopedias and online guides. If one thing doesn\’t work, try another.
Cornell Law and Justia are good online guides you can use to look for statutes. State judicial websites are also helpful.
They can be found using guides like Justia or Cornell. Take note that every state site is different.
Browse the Cornell or Justia site for statutes in your state.
In this example, rather than search through the statutes, the person used the Cornell site to browse to the Massachusetts legal materials page. They clicked court system, then typed keyword adverse possession. The result is a link called the Massachusetts law about adverse possession. Clicking the link gets a list of cases, statutes, and topics about adverse possession in Massachusetts.
Sites like Justia and Cornell organize statutes from every state in one place. Search in your jurisdiction and read through the statutes to find one that fits the facts of your case.
When you find a statute, include it in your keywords.
This will help when you search for cases. Cases that use your statute are most relevant.
Add other appropriate terms or phrases you found in the statute to your list of keywords.
Finding the most useful legal cases requires lots of searching, and there are several sources for that. We\’ll use Google Scholar for this lesson.
To use Google scholar dot com to find Massachusetts cases about adverse possession, click case law, then select Massachusetts.
All Massachusetts higher courts are selected.
Click done.
Now, when you type keywords in the text box, you\’ll get only Massachusetts cases.
Type adverse possession.
Click search.
What follows is a list of cases.
Sidebar links in red are filters you\’ve chosen for your search.
The circled items are case links that allow you to get a lot more information about similar cases.
Skim your collection of cases.
Keep your cases with facts similar to yours and that are helpful to your position.
At this point, also keep cases that are helpful to your opponent so you can find others to oppose them.
Discard cases with facts very different from yours.
Also, discard cases decided on a different statute or different issues than yours.
If you haven\’t already, update the keywords to reflect what you know so far. Discard terms and phrases that do not result in useful cases.
Continue to search and analyze.
When you start to see the same cases over and over, stop and read through the cases in more depth.
Of each case, ask yourself, does this case answer my question?
Does this case support my position?
Does this case defeat my opponent\’s position?
Are the statutes I found interpreted in this case?
Does this case have similar facts as mine?
Discard cases that do not answer at least one of these questions.
Now ask the above questions of the entire body of collected cases.
Do these cases answer my question and so on?
The purpose is to make sure there are no gaps.
If you answer yes to all the previous questions, it\’s time to stop and weave statutes and cases into your legal writing.
It\’s okay at this point to discard cases that are weak, like ones that don\’t support your case as strongly as others.
If you answer no to any of the questions, review and edit your keywords and continue searching to fill in the gap you\’re missing.
You might have to readjust your keywords and find additional statutes.
Who wins? Eric or Josie? It depends. Could be the one with the better facts. Most likely, it\’s the one with the most thorough research.
In this lesson, we discussed preliminary research steps, including knowing the court where the case was filed and identifying facts, legal issues, questions, and keywords.
Understanding legal resources included looking at primary sources like cases and statutes, and secondary sources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, and online guides.
Finally, in searching and analyzing results, we discussed determining where to search, finding and analyzing statutes and cases, recording findings, and reviewing and editing keywords.