Westlaw training is the best way to prepare for your legal career. Use the information presented here to organize your approach to the legal research assignments that you will receive during your summer legal job.
Frame your issue
Your research will be most productive if you have clearly identified your issue and terms that describe it. Before you begin, state your research question in one or two sentences, as you would in a brief or memorandum.
Follow the research pyramid
Start with the tasks on the bottom tier. Then proceed to the upper tiers.
Searching secondary sources
A good place to start your research is with secondary sources: texts, treatises, practice guides, and forms. You can gather background information and general concepts pertaining to your issue to establish a solid foundation.
- American Law Reports (ALR) is a collection of annotations that organize and evaluate all case law relevant to an issue
- American Jurisprudence 2d is an encyclopedia containing more than 400 separate titles on a broad range of legal topics and providing leads to primary law
- Treatises, including state practice guides, offer expertise on a wide range of legal issues. Many include forms, checklists, practice pointers and step-by-step instructions
- Forms can reduce the time you spend preparing your own documents and remind you of items you may have missed
- West Key Number digests list hundreds of legal topics
- Law reviews provide scholarly research and leads to primary law
- Legal newsletters give you the latest information on your legal issue
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Searching statutes
Browse the statutory index, either in print or online, to find your topic and retrieve the black letter law on your issue. Then use the notes of decisions to find relevant cases that interpret or apply your statute.
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Searching statutes
Use West Topic and Key Numbers to expand your research by finding other cases relevant to your legal issue.
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KeyCite
Use KeyCite to update your statutes, cases, and regulations to verify they are good law. Also use it throughout your research to generate leads to additional primary and secondary sources.
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Know the advantages of print and online research:
Print
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Good to use at the start of a project to become familiar with terms and issues
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Can help you outline an issue and see the big picture
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Online
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Easy for searching facts, particular cases, and statutes
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Essential for updating
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Use it to expand your research
It's good to use both.