2 Overview of the Research Process and Legal Analysis
Learning Goals
After reading this chapter, you will be able to
- List the steps of the research process
- Identify the fundamentals of legal analysis in each step of the research process
- Reflect on your own research process, strengths, and weaknesses
Overview of Legal Research Process Steps
In your first-year legal research and writing course, most likely you learned steps of the legal research process and practiced applying them in your course research and writing projects. Intertwined with the steps of the legal research process is legal analysis. Analyzing your client’s problem (what questions you need to answer, what sources might answer that question, what cases will be most relevant to the legal issues, etc.) makes the legal research process complex and challenging. This section will review the steps in the research process as well as some fundamentals of legal analysis.
- Offline preparation for research
- Find and Use Secondary Sources
- Find and Use Federal, State, and Local Enacted Law (Statutes and Ordinances)
- Find and Use Case Law
- Find and Use Administrative Law
- Find and Use Legislative History
- Update, Read, Organize, and Analyze Sources
After you have been through the research process several times, you realize that research is not a rigid, linear process. Often, you will start with a statute or a case if that is the information you have. You will then go back to secondary sources to read some context and learn more about the relevant area of law. However, because legal research is so complex, you will always use the legal research process steps as a structure so that your results are thorough, and you achieve them in the most efficient way possible.
Legal Analysis
As you proceed through the research process, you are necessarily engaging in legal analysis. When you are preparing to research, you frame a legal issue or multiple issues based on your client’s problem; you also decide on search terms that are likely to produce relevant results and select the proper jurisdiction for your research. When you find sources, you question whether they are relevant to your legal issues and articulate how those sources apply to your issues. During each step of your research, you will question if you need to change or add to your search terms in order to find more or different sources. When you have collected multiple primary and secondary sources, you will need to understand how they all fit together. The reflection activities, discussion questions, and other practice activities throughout this text will help you engage in the analysis necessary for thorough legal research, and prepare you for effective communication of your research in whatever form is required.
Reflection Activity
Write a short reflection on your current research process: What steps do you follow? What methods do you use to find secondary sources, statutes, and cases? How do you record and organize your research results? Do you feel confident that you have found all the sources you need? What are your research strengths? What are your research weaknesses? How do you decide that you are finished researching?
Student Discussion and Reflection Questions
What is the research skill that you are most confident in? Why do you think you are most confident in that skill?
What is the research skill that you are least confident in? Why do you think you are least confident in that skill?
What is the first thing you do when you get a research project?
What are your learning goals for research skills?