Burning the Midnight Oil: Legal Research
| Author | Scott A. Hatch/Lisa Zimmer Hatch |
| Profession | Founders of The Center for Legal Studies and developed their award-winning paralegal curriculum in 1980, offering it through 600 colleges nationwide |
| Pages | 199-216 |
CHAPTER 13 Burning the Midnight Oil:Legal Research 199
Chapter13
Burning the Midnight
Oil:Legal Research
You may nd your most challenging yet rewarding responsibility as a
paralegal is the hours you spend conducting legal research, whether in
a law library or online. Legal research is a critical component in the success
of civil and criminal law suits. Understanding legal research provides you with a
passkey that opens doors to virtually every legal issue that might arise in the
typical law oce or freelance paralegal practice.
But by the same token, legal research has been known to result in endless hours
of frustration, especially if you’re new at it. You must access an extensive amount
of material that grows larger by the day. And because the law invariably changes,
the legal material you nd today may not appear in the same form tomorrow. It’s
subject to continuous revision and updating. You may get so inundated with legal
material that you reach the point of sensory overload!
Approach legal research with a certain amount of open-mindedness and exibil-
ity. You’ll rarely encounter a single-issue research problem. Even though you may
think that you have only one topic to research, the specic issue could quickly
multiply into numerous related questions as the research project progresses.
IN THIS CHAPTER
»
Grasping the basic steps of legal
research
»
Getting familiar with the most
important case nders
»
Researching outside the book
»
Formatting citations properly
200 PART 3 Putting It into Practice: The Paralegal in the Civil Litigation Process
Legal research can be addictive. When your supervising attorney assigns you to
research a given issue, you need to focus your allotted time on the precise ques-
tion, or you may nd yourself returning to legal resources more often than is
ecient or practical for your rm.
Conducting Legal Research
When you tackle research for the rst time, you may nd that simply beginning the
process can be the major obstacle to thorough and ecient legal research. You can
usually spot neophyte paralegals in the law library quite easily. They’re the ones
listlessly roaming the stacks like zombies. This may seem like a natural state for
you at rst. However, as you become accustomed to the inner sanctum of the law
library or online legal research, you’ll rapidly develop a routine. With time, this
routine becomes so ingrained in your research style that the question of where to
begin researching becomes academic. Before long, you’ll join the ranks of seasoned
legal research veterans who nd it to be immensely enjoyable and challenging.
Many paralegals nd themselves thriving on the rigors presented by complex legal
research problems.
This section focuses on conducting traditional research. Even if your law rm pri-
marily uses online research tools, make sure you’re familiar with the steps
involved in nding law in traditional law books to have a better understanding of
the process.
Chapter8 provides more detail on the major sources of primary and secondary
authority you seek for through legal research. Pay particular attention to those
authorities listed in Table8-1 for an overview or review of these sources. Famili-
arize yourself with as many of them as possible to increase your eectiveness in
performing legal research.
Searching for applicable law in
four easy steps
The odds are you won’t nd a magical, universally accepted approach to complete
and thorough legal research. But many paralegals, law students, and attorneys use
a simple approach that involves the following four steps:
1. Begin the research process by consulting legal dictionaries.
Ballentine’s Legal Dictionary and Thesaurus, Black’s Law Dictionary, Words and
Phrases, and William Statsky’s Legal Thesaurus/Dictionary are examples of some of
the most popular tools you’ll use to come up with as many terms pertaining to
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