By Barbara E. Cotton

In my opinion there are three steps required to prepare a legal research memorandum in response to a problem posed. First, you must gather raw research material, which will usually be comprised of case-law, statutes, regulations and rules, excerpts from texts and legal literature. Second, you must analyze these raw materials in order to ascertain the general principles of law governing your research problem. Third, you must apply these general principles of law to the facts at hand in order to come up with a conclusion.

In this article I will outline my admittedly subjective view of a basic research approach that you can take in order to gather raw research materials. I will also discuss the basic legal research tools which I feel are essential in order to gather raw research in a thorough manner and frequently comment on ways to access these tools efficiently. Reference will also be made to some supplemental research tools which can be accessed when you are really hunting for materials that bear on your research problem.

View Full Article:.

The full article is viewable with Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have Acrobat Reader, it is free to download. Click here.