Pennsylvania Legal Research

Pennsylvania Legal Research was written to provide a practical introduction to legal research, with a special focus on Pennsylvania. It is intended to be of use to students who are beginning their legal careers; to practitioners who may need a concise description of research tools they have not used extensively; and to attorneys from other jurisdictions who are experienced legal researchers, but who lack familiarity with basic Pennsylvania sources.

The book begins with an overview of the legal research process, a discussion of the interrelationship between legal research and legal analysis, and guidance on planning and organizing research tasks. The next chapter describes in more detail some of the choices a researcher needs to make to conduct effective research. This chapter also includes strategies and tips for taking good notes and organizing research results effectively. Next, the book explains how to conduct legal research in a variety of sources. Because primary authority is the goal of most legal research, it begins with chapters on cases, statutes, constitutional provisions, and regulations. Chapters explain how to use reporters, digests, and online tools to research judicial decisions, and how to use citators like Shepard's and KeyCite in the research process. Chapters describe statutory research and legislative history, Pennsylvania Constitutional Law, administrative law, and rules of court and ethics. After this focus on primary sources, a chapter provides an overview of legal secondary sources, including form books and looseleaf services or "mini-libraries." How to update a case with the print version of Shepard's Citations and legal citation are covered in appendices.

Online research is a necessary component of thorough and efficient legal research. Accordingly, computer-assisted research is discussed in every chapter of Pennsylvania Legal Research, with particular attention paid to web-based legal research services and the major commercial providers of online legal research, LexisNexis and Westlaw. However, each chapter begins with a discussion of print resources because understanding the fundamentals of print research is critical to successful research in computerized formats. Professors who defer certain aspects of online instruction until a second semester may easily use the text because the emphasis in all chapters is on the process of researching rather than on specific tools.

This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.