1. Study the facts.  Generate search terms.

2. Read hornbooks, nutshells, note cases in your [contracts] text book, and legal encyclopedias to get an overview of the area of law.  Access these sources by using the table of contents or index or both. To map your research progress, consider answering the following points:

 a. Provide a citation to a hornbook you have consulted, with page numbers that address your issue.

 b. Provide a citation to the nutshell, with page numbers that address your issue.

 c. Provide a citation to your [contracts] textbook, with page numbers that address your issue.

 d. Provide a citation to each of the two legal encyclopedias
  with page numbers that address your issue.

  a. American Jurisprudence
  b. Corpus Juris Secundum

3. Read known authorities, obtained from the assignment or from preliminary research in overview materials; identify relevant key numbers and use the digesting system to access your jurisdiction's primary case law authority. For example, use the "find" function in computer assisted legal research tools, to read decisions cited in the note cases of a textbook on the subject. Keycite relevant headnotes in the jurisdiction of your choice. Shepardize for decisions that cite the known authority.

4. Re-read the facts.  Identify what the focus of the present assignment is.  Eliminate issues or rules which are not essential to the question the problem asks you to address.

5. List the issues you will address in the present assignment.  This is the list of issues you will research.  Note in a side margin the issues that are tangentially related but that you have not been asked to address in this assignment.

5. MORE GENERALLY: Begin with one of the following three methods to identify law in your jurisdiction. (Note, some research problems will require allow you to use all three methods; a research problem involving common law will not require a review of annotated statutes, for example).
 
 

A. Begin with case-finding tools -- if you feel ready to identify relevant primary law and i) prefer to work with case first or ii) have no reason to believe a relevant statute exists.   In this situation, the case digest in your jurisdiction is the most comprehensive book source for locating case law   Remember to consult the pocket part for most recent developments. ___________________ Update your digest research by using an annotated code to:  i) make sure statutes located in cases are the current version  ii) to find statutes that may not appear in the cases retrieved with the digest,  iii) to find cases not found in the digest

B. Begin researching with an annotated statutes, if you have reason to believe relevant statutory law exists on your question.   The annotated code in your jurisdiction will help you locate both statutes and cases.   It may also give you references to secondary sources that will help you analyze and organize primary law.  Remember to consult the pocket part for most recent developments ___________________ Update your code annotated research by using a case digest to locate any relevant cases not listed in the code annotations under the relevant statutes

C. Begin research using in-depth secondary sources, if i) you think more explanatory material will help you to better identify what primary law is relevant, or  ii) you believe that you will need persuasive authority from other jurisdictions, or  iii) you wish to collect a large number and wide variety of references in a single source.   An A.L.R. annotation or a Restatement annotations will help you achieve these objectives. ___________________ Follow leads to cases, statutes, digests, and other sources.  Make sure you use your jurisdiction's digest and code to make sure you have all the relevant statutes and cases.

6. For your jurisdiction, provide a list of case and statutory citations, providing all the citation information and explain in one or two sentences why you have chosen these cases and statutory citations.

7. For other jurisdictions, provide a list of case or statutory citations, providing all the citation information and explaining in one or two sentences why you have chosen these cases/statutory citations.  Your reason for choosing these citations will be related to the peculiar facts of the underlying claim you are researching.

8. Read the authorities you have selected in steps 6 and 7.

9. ASSESS whether you understand the primary law well enough to begin your analysis and writing.  If not, you would benefit from additional explanatory material, a topical grid for organizing the material from the cases and the statutes into an analysis, a conversation with your supervisor or professor, or a move to more in-depth secondary sources. An illustration of methods for organizing your discussion appears at: Synthesis and Synergy: Building Your Case and Your Credibility with the Help of Adverse Authority, 35 Fall Ark-Lawyer 17 (2000).

10. Find at least one law review article that addresses your subject, using
  a. Index to Legal Periodicals
  b. Current Law Index
  c. Infotrac (search by keyword)

 Provide a fully-developed citation for that law review article (using your bluebook) and summarize how that article is helpful to your analysis.

 * * *

11. Conduct your initial organization and analysis of the primary law and determine which authorities you wish to rely on.
  a. draft an outline of issues and authorities you will consult, or
  b. begin writing and return to your draft to outline the issues and authorities you have discussed in your draft.

12. Analyze your written product for weak areas that could benefit from additional research or re-reading of the authorities you have already consulted

13. Revise your written product to reflect additional research insights you have developed.

14. Before you submit your final draft, conduct a final updating check to ensure all the law you have relied upon in your analysis is still good law.
 
15. Update your primary law by using Shepard's and Keycite.