Legal Research

This lesson will introduce you to the process of researching federal agency decisions. You should expect to encounter: overview of agency regulatory powers; types of agency decisions; how to find them; how to update them; and their precedential value.

This lesson will familiarize the user with Alabama's primary sources, including the state constitution, statutes, administrative regulations, and case law. Among other things, this lesson addresses how a bill becomes law in Alabama, five ways to find Alabama statutes, and six ways to find Alabama cases with the West Digest System. The lesson discusses print and online sources, including researching primary law with free online services. This lesson does not cover secondary sources, such as treatises and law review articles.

No prior knowledge of Alabama legal research is necessary to follow this lesson.

This lesson will familiarize you with secondary sources covering Alabama law. This lesson supplements the lesson on Alabama primary sources. You will learn about finding aids for researching secondary sources and explore both online and print tools available to access those materials.

This lesson shows how to research Alaskan state law. Topics include statutes and codes, administrative law, ethics rules, the court system, secondary sources, and cases.

Using a hypothetical research problem, the lesson walks through efficient ways to find answers.

This lesson will teach you how to locate treaties between Indian tribes and the United States government. It will also show you how to determine whether a particular treaty provision is still in effect and how to interpret ambiguous treaty provisions.

This lesson is an introduction to the American Law Reports (ALR) and is intended for use by students in introductory legal research classes. The goal is to give you an understanding of the features of the resource, the best methods for using it, and an understanding of when to use it. The lesson covers both print and electronic formats of ALR.

This brief lesson will familiarize the student with the basic parts of a case (i.e., the written decision of a court) published in print and on Westlaw.

This lesson is designed to familiarize students with Arizona's primary legal sources. It will also provide a basic understanding of how to use these sources in conducting legal research. No prerequisite knowledge is required to use this lesson.

This lesson introduces students to secondary resources for Arizona legal researchers.

This lesson covers the Arkansas constitution, statutes, legislative history, cases, courts and court rules, and administrative materials. It was designed for those who have a general knowledge of researching primary legal sources.

This is an introduction to federal and state attorney general materials.

This lesson is designed to familiarize law students with legal materials that can be used when dealing with juries. It covers jury instructions, voir dire, and jury verdicts.

This lesson will instruct students about issues associated with California ballot measures including locating documents, identifying legislative intent, and examining legal challenges.

This lesson will introduce you to all of the types of primary sources you will encounter when researching California law. Topics include the Constitution, Statutes and Codes, administrative law, court system, and researching cases in California. No prior knowledge of California legal materials is required.

This lesson will serve as an introduction to some of the secondary resources available in the field of California law.

This lesson will help you master legal citations using the California Style Manual, Fourth Edition (hereinafter "Manual").

This exercise is to help users learn the rules of proper citation form for briefs and legal memoranda. It does not deal with proper citation form for law review footnotes. It is divided into three sections: Section A deals with cases, B with statutory materials and C with secondary authorities.

This lesson will introduce you to how codes are created, how they're organized, how they're published, and what it all means for your legal research. It is intended for first-year law and graduate students, or anyone who needs a refresher on the basics of this topic.

This lesson assumes that you are familiar with how statutes are passed and how they're first published, either from your own knowledge or from the CALI Lesson "Introduction to State and Federal Statutes."

For one of the questions in this lesson, you should have your Bluebook or ALWD Citation Manual handy.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the user with Colorado primary legal research materials.

This lesson is intended to familiarize the user with Colorado secondary legal research materials. The lesson focuses on secondary source material including: Colorado Practice, treatises, periodicals, CLEs and form books. No prior knowledge of Colorado legal research is necessary to follow this lesson. While this lesson is aimed primarily at first year law students who will be learning about these materials for the first time, each section may be used independently to brush up on Colorado-specific legal research skills.

The goal of this lesson is to introduce you to the basics of conducting company and industry research. Company research is the process of gathering information about a specific company. Once you have information about a company, you may need to know how that company is faring within its industry. Companies within an industry can be compared to one another, or an analysis of the industry itself can be done to see how it is performing.

This lesson is meant to provide you with an introduction to Connecticut primary legal materials. After you have completed this lesson, you will have a better understanding of where to find and how to use Connecticut primary law materials, including case law, statutes, and regulations.

This lesson will cover how to conduct legal research about the constitutions of individual states, online and in print.

This lesson introduces students to consumer law research as they assist a hypothetical client "Joe" who is the victim of a used car salesman's sleazy tactics. Students will develop strategies for researching consumer law issues on both state and federal levels. The lesson covers the "major player" consumer law statutes and the agencies empowered by those statutes. Important consumer law treatises and practitioner resources are also covered.