What Does It Mean to Do Legal Research?
Legal research is the process of finding the law that governs a question, confirming it is still in force, and applying it to a specific set of facts. “The law” here means the primary sources: constitutions, statutes passed by legislatures, regulations issued by agencies, and the court decisions interpreting all of them. Research is the bridge between a real-world problem — a contract dispute, a policy question, a law school hypothetical — and a supported answer with citations behind it.
Three things distinguish legal research from ordinary internet research. It is jurisdiction-bound: the answer in Texas may be wrong in Ohio, so every question starts with “whose law governs?” It is hierarchical: a Supreme Court holding outranks a trial court’s, and a statute displaces older common law, so sources must be weighed, not just found. And it is perishable: cases get overruled and statutes amended, so an answer is only as good as its verification date. The whole methodology below exists to handle those three problems, and every guide on this site — from how to find case law free to citators and Shepardizing — plugs into one of its steps.
A scope note: this site explains how to research the law. It does not give legal advice, and research is not a substitute for a lawyer’s judgment about a specific situation.
What Is an Example of Legal Research?
Here is a small, complete, realistic project — the kind assigned to first-year students and new paralegals. The question: must a landlord in our state pay a departing tenant interest on the security deposit?
- Frame it. The jurisdiction is one state; the area is landlord-tenant law; the likely source is a statute, since deposit rules are usually codified.
- Get background. A few minutes with a free overview — a legal encyclopedia entry or a state bar pamphlet — teaches the vocabulary: “security deposit,” “accrued interest,” statutory deadlines for return.
- Find the statute. The researcher pulls up the state code’s landlord-tenant chapter (see how to find statutes and codes) and locates the deposit section. Suppose it requires interest only for landlords above a certain number of units.
- Find the cases. Does “units” count vacant apartments? The statute is silent, so the researcher searches the state’s appellate opinions for cases interpreting that section.
- Validate. The two on-point cases get run through a citator to confirm neither has been reversed or superseded by amendment.
- Synthesize. The answer — statute, interpreting cases, open questions — goes into a short memo (see the legal research memo format).
Every serious research project is this loop at larger scale. Which is why the process is worth learning as a process:
The 6-Step Legal Research Process
Step 1: Frame the question. Convert the messy problem into a researchable question with three parts: jurisdiction (federal or state, and which state), area of law, and the legally significant facts. Vague questions produce vague research. “Can my neighbor do that?” becomes “under Ohio law, does a landowner need a permit to remove a boundary-line tree?”
Step 2: Get background from secondary sources. Before touching primary law, read what someone has already written about it — a legal encyclopedia entry, a treatise section, a bar journal article. Secondary sources give you the framework, the vocabulary courts actually use, and citations to the leading authorities. Ten minutes here saves hours of blind keyword searching. The distinction between source types matters enough that we cover it separately in primary vs secondary legal sources.
Step 3: Find the governing primary authority — statutes first. Check whether a statute or regulation controls before hunting for cases; in most modern disputes one does, and it changes what the case law is for (the cases then interpret the statute rather than supply the rule). Then find the cases from your jurisdiction — start free with the databases in our guide to how to find case law free.
Step 4: Expand from one good case. A single on-point opinion is a map of the field. Read the cases it cites for the foundational rules; use “cited by” tools to find every later case that discusses it; and note how courts characterize the rule. This citation-chaining step is where research gets efficient — after it, you stop finding new authorities and start seeing the same ones again, the usual signal that coverage is complete.
Step 5: Validate everything. Any authority you plan to rely on must be checked for continued validity: cases through a citator, statutes for recent amendments. This step is non-negotiable in professional practice, and skipping it is how lawyers end up cited in sanctions opinions. More below.
Step 6: Synthesize and record. Research is not finished until it is written down: the question, the answer, the supporting authorities with citations, and an honest account of what remains unsettled. The standard vehicle is the objective research memo. Recording as you go also prevents the classic failure mode of re-researching the same question twice.
Primary Sources First: Cases, Statutes, Regulations
A discipline worth making explicit: only primary sources are the law. Secondary sources explain, summarize, and criticize, but no court is bound by a treatise. The practical hierarchy inside primary law runs: the applicable constitution; statutes; regulations issued under them; then case law, which both interprets the other three and supplies the rule where no enactment speaks. Within case law, height in the court hierarchy is what makes authority binding — a point covered in depth in our case law guide.
The “first” in this section’s title is about citation, not reading order. You will often read a secondary source first (step 2), but you cite primary authority. A memo that rests on an encyclopedia where a statute was available is a research failure, even if the encyclopedia was right.
Validating: Is It Still Good Law?
The law moves. Cases are reversed on appeal, overruled years later, or quietly abrogated when a legislature amends the statute they interpreted. An authority that was solid when decided can be worthless today, and nothing on the face of the opinion tells you. Validation is the step that catches this, and it has a standard toolkit: citators — Shepard’s on Lexis, KeyCite on Westlaw — which flag every citing reference and grade the treatment (followed, criticized, overruled). Free alternatives can get you partway: CourtListener’s citing-opinions lists and Google Scholar’s “How cited” view surface later discussion, though neither applies editorial judgment. Our guide to citators and Shepardizing walks through reading the signals. For statutes, check the section’s effective date and any pending amendments in the current code.
If validation ever feels optional, recent history offers a corrective: courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing briefs built on AI-fabricated citations no one verified — the cautionary tales are collected in our guide to AI legal research tools.
Tools of the Trade
The modern toolkit splits into three tiers. Free databases now cover the essentials: CourtListener and Google Scholar for case law, Cornell’s Legal Information Institute for the US Code and CFR, Justia for browsing codes and opinions, and official court and legislature websites for the freshest versions. Subscription platforms — Westlaw, LexisNexis, vLex, HeinOnline for journal archives — add the editorial layer: authoritative citators, annotated codes, headnotes, and secondary sources. Institutions fill the gap between the tiers: law school libraries, county law libraries, and bar association member benefits often provide the paid platforms free. We compare all of these in our directory of legal research platforms, and if you have a law library nearby, our guide on how to use a law library shows what a reference librarian can do for you (a lot).
For the wider set of guides — court records, case law, libraries, journals — start at the Legal Journal homepage.