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LARW: Legal Analysis Research & Writing Guide

For first year law students taking LARW.

How-to Videos and Tutorials

Reading the Cases is Important

It is not enough to find cases containing the search terms.  Read the case to make sure it is the context you are looking for.

Example of a court chastising an attorney for quoting something out of context:

"Despite the Court's repeated entreaties to counsel to provide case authority construing the meaning of 'unfairness' under the MCPA . . . counsel for Plaintiffs cited cases . . . which applied a different consumer protection statute—the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act—to a set of facts essentially similar to the case at bar." Hibdon v. Safeguard Properties, LLC, 2015 WL 4249525 (July 9, 2015).

(Thanks to Sam Berbano from Westlaw)

Research Plan

The main elements of a research plan are:

  • Jurisdiction
  • Issue statement, incorporating relevant key facts from the case at hand
  • Keywords
  • Search statements (natural language or terms and connectors search)
  • Search strategy - which sources will you use, in what order. Often it is a good idea to start with a secondary source. The last step should be checking the validity of sources with a citator such as Shepard's or Keycite.