1. Living Your Best (Research) Life: How to Quickly and Efficiently Perform Legal Research
Diversity Attorney Pipeline Program (DAPP)
2018 CLIENT READINESS BOOTCAMP
Saturday, June 2nd from 9:30am-11:00am
Location: Grant Thornton LLP (171 N. Clark St., 2nd Floor)

2. Living Your Best (Research) Life: How to Quickly and Efficiently Perform Legal Research
Librarians / Presenters:
Anne Hudson
Head of Reference Services
DePaul University College of Law
Vincent G. Rinn Law Library
Heather Hummons
Head of Access Services
DePaul University College of Law
Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

3. Brief Review of the Legal System
Constitution – Enumerated and Reserved
Separation of Powers – But with overlap
Governmental Structures – Executive, Legislative, Judicial, States
Jurisdiction can be complicated but is essential
Documents generated by Government form the basis for Legal Research

4. Brief Review of Legal Research
Two main types of Legal Resources:
Primary Secondary
*photos courtesy of Janet Lindenmuth; Flickr;

5. Brief Review of Legal Research
Four Main Sources of Primary Law:
Constitutions (Where all Law is derived / principal doctrine)
Case Law (Judicial / Courts)
Statutes (Legislative / Congress)
Regulations / Administrative Law (Executive / Agencies)
Other Sources: Treaties

6. Brief Review of Legal Research
Primary Law Examples:
U.S. Constitution or State Constitutions
Case Law (Judicial / Courts)
United States Reports (U.S.), Federal Reporter (F. /F. 2d/F. 3d), Regional Reporters such as North Eastern Reporter (N.E./N.E.2d), Illinois Reports (Ill./Ill 2d)
Statutes (Legislative / Congress)
United States Code (U.S.C.), Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS-official)
Regulations / Administrative Law (Executive / Agencies)
Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.), Federal Register (Fed. Reg.), Illinois Register (Ill. Reg.)

7. Brief Review of Legal Research
Secondary Sources:
Legal Dictionaries (ex. Blacks Law Dictionary)
Words and Phrases
Legal Encyclopedias (ex. AM JUR, Corpus Juris Secundum)
Annotated Law Reports (ex. American Law Reports)
Restatements (ex. Restatement of the law, second Torts 2D, American Law Institute)
Legal Periodicals (ex. DePaul Law Review)
Treatises (ex. Hornbook series)
Loose Leafs (ex. Immigration Law and Procedure)
Legal Directories (ex. Sullivan Law Directory for the State of Illinois)

8. Brief Review of Legal Research
Primary
Secondary
Type of Authority
Mandatory or Persuasive
Persuasive
Resources
Legal rules: Constitutions, case law (i.e. court opinions), Statutes, Regulations, Treaties
Legal commentary: Legal dictionaries, Legal encyclopedias, Legal periodicals, Legal directories, Annotated Law Reports, Restatements of Law, Words and Phrases, Treatises, and Loose Leafs
Binding or non binding
Mandatory = Binding when from jurisdiction
Persuasive = Non-binding when not from jurisdiction, sometimes referenced in instances when no mandatory in jurisdiction exists
Citable in court
Yes
NO! Do not cite secondary sources in court.

9. Brief Review of Legal Research
Why use secondary resources if they are not the law?
Secondary resources can:
Analyze the law on a particular topic if you need to become familiar with a legal topic or issue.
Additionally:
Secondary sources are usually authored by scholars or specialists in a field who have collected and organized the law relevant to the problem.
Most Important:
Secondary sources are thoroughly indexed and logically organized and cite primary authority.

10. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research
The best way to save time and money is to plan your research first
Review the facts that you are provided
Ask yourself the following questions:
Who, What, When, Where, Why?
Is there an obvious legal issue, perhaps multiple potential issues?
Is it clearly a Federal or State issue, perhaps it involved both?

11. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research
Spend some time thinking about what the key facts and issues might be, they will form the basis of your most effective search
Think about synonyms or other ways others may think of your terms
Night, Evening, After dark, Past midnight, Overnight . . .
Burglary, Robbery, Theft, Stolen, Taken, Crime, Offense . . .
Now that you have an idea of what you are looking for, you can craft a well written search that will retrieve selected documents that should be in the appropriate jurisdiction and include the appropriate facts and issues. (without just typing random keywords into a search box)

12. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research: Advanced Searching and Using Boolean Operators, Terms and Connectors
Why use Boolean Searching? Boolean searching allows you to construct searches where results are based on a precise relationship with words in the document and will only produce results that match the stated relationship of the words in the search. Almost every database you encounter will allow for Boolean searching (although each may have its own variations and shortcuts, so consult the database’s glossary of terms first). Google and other Internet search engines also make use of Boolean operators to help you more effectively and efficiently search the Internet.

13. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research: Advanced Searching and Using Boolean Operators, Terms and Connectors
Connectors – AND, OR, NOT
AND Searches for results that include both the term before and the term after the operator. Ex. cultural AND heritage
OR Searches for results that include either the term before or the term after the operator (or both). Ex. heritage OR property
NOT Searches for results that do not include the term after the operator. Ex. heritage NOT property

14. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research: Advanced Searching and Using Boolean Operators, Terms and Connectors
Quotation Marks – “search term here”, searches for the exact phrase enclosed in the quotation marks.
Root expanders or wildcard operators – *, ! , ?, #
Use an asterisk, question mark, pound, or exclamation mark at the end of a search term as a root expander to pull all variations of the word or in place of a letter within a search term as a placeholder (wildcard operator) for unknown variations or misspellings of a term. Ex. Wom!n for woman or women or Inquir* for inquire or inquiry

15. Tips for Effective and Efficient Electronic Legal Research: Advanced Searching and Using Boolean Operators, Terms and Connectors
Proximity Operators – w/p, w/s, w#
Use to search for words that occur within a specific number of words of each other.
W for within; w/p for within the same paragraph, w/s for within the same sentence, w/# for within number of words.

16. Small Group Activity - Exercise #1: Research Problem Analysis (25 minutes)
Runtime: 15 minutes for group analysis, 10 minutes for reports on findings
Please break into 6 small groups with 5 members each.
Please make sure members are not from the same law school. We want you to become familiar with some of your colleagues from other institutions.
Each group will receive a unique problem and analysis forms.
Please designate one member of your group to report on your analysis.

17. Exercise #2: Practice with Lexis and Westlaw
Run time: 20 minutes with brief report out at end.
Using the Issue Statement(s) your group came up with for the Research Problem Analysis:
Draft a Terms and Connectors search that you think will come up with relevant results.
S023352_Final.pdf
Run your search in Lexis and then Westlaw
Compare your results, any noticeable differences, anything seem easier or more clear about one over the other?

18. Question and Answer Section:
Do you have any questions about what we covered today? Is there something we did not cover today that you have questions about? REMINDER: If you need assistance with legal research do not hesitate to contact the librarians at your institution. If you have specific questions about Lexis or Westlaw features do not hesitate to contact the Lexis or Westlaw representatives at your institution.

19. Anne Hudson Anne.Hudson@depaul.edu
Thank you for your participation! We hope this information is helpful. Good luck in your studies and summer internships!
How to contact us:
Anne Hudson
Heather Hummons