Law School Insider | Legal Research

Welcome to Law School Insider! This unique blog series features insights from the PLAS Graduate Assistant about different aspects of the law school experience, highlighting the differences between law school and college over a variety of topics including classes, extracurricular activities, finals, and more!

What is legal research?

Legal research is a fundamental part of the law school curriculum, with most law students required to take an introductory research course in their 1L year. Legal research is also very relevant to the profession, as all lawyers need to understand how to effectively conduct legal research to determine current legal precedent and law which is necessary to assess legal issues, advise clients, draft legal instruments, pleading and motions, and generally practice law. Legal research may look quite different from your undergraduate experience, but it often follows many similar principles.

Undergraduate research can look very different depending on the type of research, the field, and the setting in which the research is conducted. For those in STEM fields, undergraduate research often includes running tests in a lab overseen by a professor or TA. In the liberal arts, research at the undergraduate level may incorporate synthesizing data, policies, theories, academic scholarship, and more to create a paper that articulates a new idea or summarizes a body of research. Research is defined very broadly, and ultimately is focused on an investigation by a scholar that contributes to their respective field of study. All students at the undergraduate level are exposed to research, whether that be as a part of a lab section of a class or writing a research paper. Similarly, all students at law school are required to conduct legal research. However, legal research can look quite different from the type of research that is conducted at the undergraduate level and is an essential professional skill necessary for the day to day practice of law.

Interested in undergraduate research opportunities?  Check out the Office of Undergraduate Research to learn more! 

Legal research is used to understand what different legal rules are and how they are applied by different courts. Lawyers conduct this research to evaluate a client’s position and options as it relates to a legal issue, and to understand how they should advise their client on a course of action, legal remedies, or ultimately how to make a strong legal argument in court. In the U.S. what the law comes from different sources which work together to inform the understanding of what the law “is”. These sources include written laws (statutes), administrative rules and policies, and very importantly case law (court decisions) which helps interpret and provide additional meaning to laws and rules. The legal system is based on the concept of case law precedent. Precedent means that a rule established in a legal case (court decision) becomes authoritative to the court when deciding future cases with similar legal issues or facts. The legal doctrine of stare decisis demands that courts follow precedent. Thus, for lawyers to understand how to advise clients or to make compelling arguments about why a court should rule in their favor, they often need to point to precedent that supports their side.

As courts decide new cases or new written laws are established, what the law “is” evolves. Lawyers therefore must be life-long learners of law and must conduct legal research before advising clients, creating legal instruments, or bringing a case to court.

When conducting legal research, law students and lawyers need to keep the different types of legal authority in mind. The most persuasive and effective authority is called binding/mandatory authority. Since precedent demands that courts follow previous decisions, cases decided by higher courts in the same jurisdiction must be followed.

A court’s jurisdiction is the area over which it has power. For example, the Illinois Supreme Court has jurisdiction over the entire state of Illinois. Thus, when the Illinois Supreme Court makes a decision, all the lower courts, which include the appellate and trial courts within Illinois, must abide by that decision. If you were bringing a case to trial at the Champaign County courthouse, any decisions by the Illinois Supreme Court would be binding authority.

In contrast, any decisions outside of a court’s jurisdiction are called persuasive authority. For example, a decision by the Supreme Court of Wyoming on the same legal issue could be persuasive in Illinois, but not controlling or binding. While this type of authority is much weaker, it can be helpful for attorneys to argue that other courts treat an issue in a particular way.

Finally, legal research can also lead to nonlegal or supplemental sources. These can include secondary sources which are not cases, but instead are legal scholarship (published in law journals), books, or guides written by specialists. These sources may summarize a body of law, explain how practitioners can write documents for court, or propose idealistic changes to specific legal issues or areas of the law. For example, American Law Reports (ALRs) are written by experts to summarize and analyze the law in specific areas. They include extensive citations to primary sources and other secondary sources, which can make them an excellent resource when beginning to research a new area of law.

Nowadays, very few lawyers use actual books to conduct legal research. Rather, they use online research tools. The most well-known legal research services are Westlaw and LexisNexis. Both these services provide extensive access to different legal sources, such as case opinions, statutes, legal encyclopedias, and many other secondary sources. Westlaw and LexisNexis also have their own organizational systems that categorize cases into certain legal topics and key terms. As a law student, you will take courses to help you learn to utilize these research systems and will continue to utilize them through other coursework and during summer internships.

Besides Westlaw and LexisNexis, there are several other resources available to lawyers to conduct research. First, there are government websites that provide access to U.S. codes, federal statutes & regulations, state statutes & regulations, and legislative history. In more recent times, lawyers have also begun to test out using AI-powered research tools to help with research. Several other websites provide access to different legal sources for free, including Findlaw, Legal Information Institute, and the Caselaw Access Project.

Most law schools offer a class in Legal Writing and Research. Research classes teach students how to effectively research using the tools available to students. Typically law students will receive access to Westlaw or LexisNexis, and they will learn how to utilize the different tools of those respective services in class. Once in practice, most firms pay for access to one or the other, so it is important to understand and learn how to use those resources. Legal research is also typically used as a supplement to Legal Writing, which will require students to conduct research to write different legal documents such as memos or briefs. If you want to learn more about legal writing, stay tuned for our next installment of Law School Insider – Legal Writing!