Review: Fall Semester

1
Review Fall Semester
2
Review assignment

• Reviews the skills developed this fall
• Questions are of the type that you will see on
  the research final exam
• Due 1/28/00
• Identify yourself by NAME
• Work alone
• Type your answers and identify yourself on each
  page

3
Review assignment

• Unnecessary to turn in the questions with your
  answer
• Please contact me with any questions
• The sample answer is far more detailed that I
  expect from you -- it is a review document itself
• You need not approach it in length or detail

4
Review assignment billing

• Submit a brief bill with a description of work at
  the end of Questions 1 and 2
• Keep track of your time to the 10th of an hour
• You will bill for your time at 75/hour (cheap)
• Charge the client for any online searches
  (including Finds/Lexsees, KeyCites and Shepards)
• Charge the client for any cases printed or
  photocopied

5
Why are you conducting legal research?

• To find all of the law that is relevant and
  mandatory on your problem
• An issue of topic and place
• But
• Whats relevant?
• Whats mandatory?
• To find all of the law necessary to solve your
  legal problem

6
What are the sources of law?

• Judiciary
• Legislature
• Executive Branch

7
Judicial law

• Cases
• Can make law
• Can interpret law created by another
• Recall OMI
• Rules
• Later this semester

8
How to find cases?

• Digest
• Other cases
• Online search
• Boolean
• Relevancy
• Citator
• Other methods

9
West digest

• What is a digest?
• Topical arrangement (by Topic and Key Number) of
  paragraphs describing pieces of law in cases
• How does a digest work?
• Identify relevant Topics and Key Numbers
• Identify digest(s) that cover the courts of
  interest to you

10
How to use a digest (continued)

• Look up Topics and Key Numbers in relevant
  digests, select and read cases

11
How to find a Topic and Key Number?

• Descriptive word index
• Topic outline
• Case in hand

12
How to update a digest search?

• Examine
• Main volume
• Pocket part
• Supplementary pamphlet (if one exists)
• Determine how up-to-date the pocket part (or
  supplementary pamphlet) is
• Continue tracking the T/K in the mini-digests
  in the relevant reporters

13
How to find cases?

• Digest
• Other cases
• Citator
• Online search

14
Other cases

• Newer cases will cite older cases that the court
  thinks makes the point of law
• Careful reading of cases will allow you to work
  backward in time

15
Citator

• A citator will indicate every newer case that
  cites an older case
• One use of this information is to gather the body
  of law that the courts think is relevant to an
  issue

16
Online search

• Construct Boolean or relevancy searches that will
  return some set of cases that may be on your
  topic
• Searches without a controlled vocabulary tend to
  return a small percentage of all relevant
  material
• But,
• Topic and Key Number is a controlled vocabulary
  that you can search on Westlaw

17
Case verification

• Citators not only show you the newer cases that
  cited your older case, but they also provide an
  indication of how the newer case treated your
  older case
• Is your case still good law?
• Are newer cases moving away from the reasoning in
  your case?
• Is your cases being followed?

18
Sources of law

• Judiciary
• Legislature
• Executive branch

19
Law created by a legislature

• Trumps judge-made law
• In an attempt to solve prospective problems,
  legislature-made law is written in very general
  terms
• Recall OMI
• Was the statute (legislature-made law) helpful
  for answering your problem?
• Did you need cases to flesh out the law?