Step 1: Formulate Your Legal Questions
The top box, “your broad legal research topic,” represents the first step in legal research: formulating the questions you wish to answer. This is not as easy as you may think. Often we think we have a question in mind but when we try to answer it, we find that we don’t quite know what we’re looking for.
The best bet here is to make sure that your question has a logical answer. For instance, if you have been bitten by a dog and are looking for information about dog bites, break your search down into some specific answerable questions, such as:
• Who is responsible for injury caused by a biting dog?
• What facts do I have to prove to sue and win compensation for the dog bite?
• Is there a statute or ordinance that covers dog bites?
• Does it make any difference if the dog has or has not ever bitten anyone before?
Keep in mind that the first articulation of your research questions will probably change as your research
progresses. In this example, you may start out thinking that your issue involves dogs, only to find out that it really involves the duties of a landowner to prevent harm from dangerous conditions on the land.
Step 2: Categorize Your Research Questions
The next box down represents the classification stage. Because of the way legal materials are organized, it is
usually necessary to place your research topic into a category described by using the three variables shown in this box.
When you break down your question into many words and phrases. That enables you to use legal indexes to find a background discussion of your topic.
Step 3: Find Appropriate Background Resources
When starting a legal research task, you need an overview of the legal issues connected with your questions and an idea of how your questions fit into the larger legal fabric. This background information can normally best be obtained from books and articles, written by experts, that summarize and explain the subject.
Step 4: Look for Statutes
After you review background resources, you will want to proceed to the law itself. Usually, you should hunt for statutory law first. In most instances, an analysis of the law starts with legislative or administrative enactments—statutes and rules—and ends with court decisions that interpret them.
You too should usually deal with the statutory material first and the cases second. However, some important areas of the law are developed primarily in the courts—the law of torts (personal injuries) is a good example.
If you have a tort problem—and the background resource provides you with appropriate references—you might wish to start with cases first, and then come back and research statutory law if and when it is indicated. This alternative path is shown on the chart by the line that goes directly from “background resources” to “relevant case.”
Step 5: Find a Relevant Case
After finding one or more relevant statutes or rules, you will want to see how they have been interpreted by the courts. To pinpoint cases that discuss the statute (or rule, regulation or ordinance) you are interested in, use the tools listed in the next box in the “Basic Legal Research Method Chart”: case notes and Shepard’s Citations for Statutes.
As soon as you find a case that speaks directly to your research question, you are almost home. This is because two major research tools cross-reference all cases by the issues decided in them. So if you find one case discussing your question, you can often quickly find a bunch of others discussing the same question.
Step 6: Use Shepard’s and Digests to Find More Cases
Once you find a relevant case, Shepard’s Citations for Cases and the West Digest system allow you to rapidly go from that case to any other cases that have some bearing on your precise questions.
Step 7: Use Shepard’s to Update Your Cases
Once you have found cases that pertain to your issue, you need to find out whether the principles stated in these cases are still valid law. To do this, you need to understand the factual context of each case, analyze each case for its value as precedent and use the digests and Shepard’s Citations for Cases to locate the most recent cases that bear on your issue.
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