Legal Research Demystified: A Step-by-Step Approach

Legal Research Demystified offers a fresh approach to finding and understanding the law. It is the first textbook to break down the research process into detailed steps for common law and statutory issues. This approach virtually guarantees that the reader will avoid wrong turns on the research journey. This book engages the reader with many visual aids and examples. Every chapter summarizes difficult concepts with charts and diagrams. Additionally, the book illustrates the finding tools with screen captures and explains the research steps with hypothetical legal problems (e.g., is the client’s non-competition agreement enforceable?). 

 

Like other research texts, the book discusses print sources and extensively covers online databases. As to sources and tools, this book covers the “usual suspects”: secondary sources, cases and reporters, digests, regulations, statutes and codes, citators, keyword searching, Westlaw, Lexis Advance, and free research websites.

 

Legal Research Demystified, however, differs from existing textbooks in multiple aspects. This book

• summarizes key points at the end of each chapter;
• contains a chart identifying binding cases in almost every situation (g., state law issue in federal court);
• includes a table to easily discern the strongest from the weakest authorities for various legal issues and factual circumstances;
• sets forth eight methods to identify relevant secondary sources;
• discusses six methods to find cases that interpret and apply relevant statutes;
• contains checklists for how to confirm the validity of cases and statutes; and
• has several chapters on finding legal authorities when prior methods yield little to no results.

 

New books come with an access code to Core Knowledge, an online platform that provides instant feedback to users. It contains the same multiple-choice questions from the end of each book chapter. Core Knowledge also hosts interactive research exercises. These self-guided exercises teach students to apply the research steps using Westlaw and Lexis Advance to resolve their clients’ legal questions.

 

In sum, by following this book’s step-by-step approach, students and attorneys will find all relevant legal authorities for almost any legal question governed by statutes or the common law. 

Eric Voigt is a Research and Writing Associate Professor of Law at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law. He is also the founder of R+W Legal Consultants, where he develops and presents interactive CLE courses on lawyering skills.