Chapter 5: Legal Research

[Erin Lain]

Comment 1: This chapter probably won’t make much sense until you are
in the thick of your legal research and writing class, and working on
your first writing assignment. So I encourage you to review this
chapter when you get to that point because there are some really great
pointers to going about legal research.

Comment 2: Legal research uses the same skills that you use in every
other law school class: siphoning out the rule in a case and applying
it to new facts. The difference between your core classes and legal
research and writing is that you are expected to go out and find
cases, as opposed to having the cases in your text book. As you can
imagine, in the course of our countries 225+ year history, A LOT of
cases have been decided, so there is A LOT to sift through. In your
first semester of legal research and writing you will be responsible
for writing three memos, where you are given fact scenarios, and you
are expected to analyze them with relevant case law. For the first
memo assignment you will be given the cases, but for the last two you
will need to research to find relevant cases in order to analyze your
situation.

Comment 3: PAY ATTENTION IN YOUR WESTLAW and LEXIS sessions. Westlaw
and Lexis are like the Google/Wikipedia of legal research. They are
the main research tools that you will use when writing your memos. You
will have a short session to learn how to use each of these online
research databases. PAY ATTENTION, and make sure you leave the session
understanding how to fully use the databases. Nothing can frustrate
you more or cause you to waste time than not knowing how to use
Westlaw or Lexis efficiently. ASK if you don’t know how to do
something!

Comment 4: In college, I was the type of person who liked to research
and write my papers the night before they were due. YOU CANNOT DO THIS
IN LAW SCHOOL, YOU WILL FAIL! It takes a lot of time to find relevant
cases in the jurisdiction of your scenario. It will take at least a
week+ to read through, sift through cases and find the relevant ones
that you can use. The actual writing of your memo won’t take as long,
but the research deserves quite a bit of your attention. Also, allow
at least one to two days to sort out your citations (remember the last
chapter).

Question: Do you hate research? If you do, pay attention in legal
research and writing class, the whole purpose of the class is to show
you the tricks to make legal research easier. It’s not the most
exciting class, but if I could do one thing differently in my first
year, it would be to take this class more seriously. The reason it’s
easy to put this class on the back burner is because it’s the one
class that is mostly lecturing, and you really don’t get called
on.