Skip to Main Content

Legal Research for Beginners

This guide is an accompaniment to the webinar: Legal Research for Beginners by Ellyssa Valenti Kroski presented to the American Library Association in May 2024.

A Beginner’s Research Plan

A Beginner’s Research Plan

  1. Begin with Secondary Resources
    • Clarify issues, define terms of art, etc.
    • Develop list of key terms for searching
      • Black’s Law Dictionary – definitions of more than 55,000 terms
    • Determine what type of primary law applies to your issue, and identify statutes, case law, administrative law, a combination of one or more, etc.
    • Look to law reviews, blog posts, treatises, legal encyclopedias
    • Start with Google with searches
    • Determine the jurisdiction you’re dealing with – Federal or state?
    • Civil or criminal?

  2. Start to look for citations and links to primary law

    • Get primary law on federal or state government websites, or on Westlaw/Lexis to include annotations.

    • Use key numbers, headnotes, and topic headings to find other relevant documents.

  3. Find and Review Primary Law & Check for good law

    • Use Citators – verify the validity of cases/statutes, provide case history, provide references to other related cases

    • Now incorporated into online records through symbols or flags (“how cited” on Google Scholar, Shepard’s in Lexis or Keycite in Westlaw).

  4. Expand research if necessary.