what is citation in legal research

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Legal Citations

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Tools for Reading Citations

• Prince's Bieber Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations by Mary Miles Prince Call Number: KF246 .B46 2017 (Location: Reference) Publication Date: 2017-01-01 The best guide for deciphering cryptic abbreviations.
• Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations (Online Resource) Web-based service allows you to search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications, from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States, including those covering international and comparative law. A wide selection of major foreign language law publications is also included.

Definition of a Legal Citation

A citation (or cite) in legal terminology is a reference to a specific legal source, such as a constitution, a statute, a reported case, a treatise, or a law review article.  A standard citation includes first the volume number, then the title of the source, (usually abbreviated) and lastly, a page or section number.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This guide is not meant to provide guidance for correct legal citation format; rather, it is a basic guide to understanding the parts of a legal citation and a list of sources for looking up legal abbreviations. Be sure to follow the rules of your particular court for proper citation format.

Case Citations

Case citations designate the volume number of the reporter in which the case appears, the name of the reporter, the page on which the case begins, and the year the decision was rendered.  Thus, each citation is unique.  Cases, or judicial opinions, can be published by more than one publisher.  If this occurs, the case name may be followed by one or more “parallel citations.”  The official reporter is the one with whose publisher the court has contracted to publish the reports; any other citation is called “unofficial.”  (Sometimes a case will have only an unofficial citation, such as in the Federal Reporter; then the “unofficial” cite will be listed alone.)  The text of the opinions will be the same in the official or unofficial sources, but the unofficial may contain additional editorial features which differ from the official.    In California, the State Supreme Court cases are published officially in the California Reports, series 1-4; the Court of Appeals cases are officially published in the California Appellate Reports, series 1-4.  Unofficial reports are published by West; Supreme Court and Appellate Court decisions are published together in the West’s California Reporter, series 1, 2 & 3.  The Supreme Court decisions are also published in the Pacific Reporter, series 1, 2 & 3. 

Here are examples of citations for California:

Federal cases are cited in the same format as California cases.  For United States Supreme Court cases, the official reports, United States Reports, (abbreviated “US”) are published by the U.S. Government.  There are two parallel citations for Supreme Court cases: those published by West in the Supreme Court Reporter are abbreviated “S.Ct.”; those published by LexisNexis, the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers’ Edition, are abbreviated “L.Ed.” or “L.Ed. 2d”  Court of Appeals cases, published only in West’s Federal Reporter, are abbreviated “F.,” “F. 2d.” or “F. 3d.”  Federal District Court cases are published only in West’s Federal Supplement, abbreviated “F. Supp.” or “F. Supp. 2d”  

Code Citations

Citations to California Codes do not begin with numbers; instead, the title of the code name is followed by the section number, the publisher, and the date of the volume (not the date the individual code section was enacted).  Parallel cites are not used for the code, since there is no official code for California.  The version of the unofficial code used (Deering’s or West) is indicated in the date portion of the citation.

Citations to the United States Code follow the same general format as cases; however, the first number refers to the title of the United States Code rather than a volume number, and the second number refers to the section number of the code rather than the page number.  Parallel cites are not used for the code, since the numbering is uniform for both official and unofficial codes.  The unofficial codes are designated by their own abbreviations, U.S.C.A. (West) and U.S.C.S. (Lexis). 

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Locating Legal Information in Primary and Secondary Resources: #1: How To Read A Legal Citation

• Legal Resource Guides
• #1: How To Read A Legal Citation
• #1A: Basic Legal Research Materials
• #1B: Self-Help Materials
• #2: Digests: An Index to Case Law
• #3: Introduction to Shepard's Citators
• #4: Statutory Law: Federal
• #5: Introduction to Legal Forms
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How to read a legal citation.

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Legal Research Guide #1

How to read a legal citation,  what is a citation.

A citation is a reference to a legal authority. It is essential that citations to legal materials follow a standard format so that anyone using a law library may find the resources cited. Citation formats exist for many different types of legal sources including cases, statutes and secondary legal materials. Understanding the basic format for each of these different types of sources will enable the researcher to more independently locate materials in the law library.

Reading a Case Citation

Cases are published in reporters. A case citation is generally made up of the following parts:

• the names of the parties involved in the lawsuit
• the volume number of the reporter containing the full text of the case
• the abbreviated name of that case reporter
• the page number on which the case begins the year the case was decided; and sometimes
• the name of the court deciding the case.

Below is an example of a case citation:

Hebb v. Severson , 201 P.2d 156 (Wash. 1948).

In this example, Hebb and Severson are the parties in the case. The case can be found in volume 201 of the Pacific Reporter, Second Series beginning on page 156. The case was decided by the Washington State Supreme Court in 1948.

How To Find A Case By Citation

• Once you have a citation, the first step in locating the case is to identify the appropriate reporter. As in the example above, the abbreviated title of the reporter will be found in the citation. Use the following list to convert the abbreviation in your cite to a full reporter title.
• For a more extensive list of abbreviations, consult either the abbreviation table in  The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation ,  ALWD Citation Manual , or  Beiber’s  Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations . Ask at the Reference Desk for assistance in locating these sources.
• After you have identified the complete name of the case reporter, you will want to locate that reporter series in the law library. (A location table is available at the Reference Desk to assist you.)
• Now that you have found the reporter series, the next step is to identify the volume where the case is located. In a citation, the volume number always precedes the abbreviated reporter title.
• Next you need to determine the page on which the case begins. This page number always follows the abbreviated reporter title in your citation.
• Now that you have identified the appropriate volume and page number, pull the volume from the shelf. (Volume numbers are located on the spine of each reporter.) Turning to the appropriate page, you will find the full text of the opinion of the court.  Using the volume, reporter abbreviation, page number is also the best way to find a case electronically. 

Reading a Statutory Citation

Unlike case law which is made by judges in specific court cases, statutory law is made by the federal and state legislative branches of the government. Statutory law is published in codes. The United States Code contains statutes that have been passed by Congress. In addition, every state publishes its own statutory code. Citation format for statutes varies widely across the state and federal systems, however, there are similarities.

A federal statutory citation generally contains the following elements:

• the title or chapter number of the code
• the abbreviated name of the code
• the section or part number of the title or chapter; and
• the year of the code

Below is an example of a United States Code citation:

42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2006).

In this citation 42 is the Title of the Code where this statute can be found. U.S.C. is the abbreviation for the United States Code. § is the section symbol. 1983 is the section of title 42 of the code where the statute can be found. 2006 is the year of the code.

How to Find a Statute by Citation

• Once you have a citation, the first step is to identify the appropriate code. If you are researching a United States Code citation you may use any of the three federal statutory codes. Abbreviations for the federal statutory codes are as follows:
• The U.S.C. is the official code of the federal government. This set contains the actual statutes as adopted by Congress. The U.S.C.A. and U.S.C.S. are annotated codes published by commercial entities. In addition to the statutes, these codes contain other information that may be valuable to your research. Perhaps most helpful are the case annotations where courts have interpreted the statutory sections. Annotated codes also provide cross-references to legal encyclopedias, legal periodicals, and federal regulations. An additional advantage of annotated codes is that they are available on the shelf long before the official U.S.C. which is published by the government.
• After you have identified the appropriate code, the next step is to identify the correct title. The United States Code is divided into 50 titles. Within all three versions of the United States Code, the titles are arranged numerically. In your citation, the title always precedes the code abbreviation.
• Once you have identified the appropriate title, the next step is to determine the section number. The section number follows the code abbreviation in your cite.
• Now that you have identified the appropriate title and section number you are ready to locate the code in the law library. Once you have found the code you will notice that the titles are printed on the spine. Often one title will span several volumes. Locate the volume containing your title and turn to the appropriate section number. Here you will find the full text of your statutory section.  The title, code abbreviation, and section can also be used to find the code section electronically.
• After you have found your section you will want to make sure that there have not been any amendments or changes. To do this check the pocket part (in the back cover of the volume) or the softbound supplement (shelved immediately after your volume).  Electronic code versions should be up to date, but you should always check to see when the electronic version was last updated.

(Last Revised 3/4/201 3 )

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MSL Introduction to Legal Research: Legal Citation

• Legal Research Process
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• Legal Citation

What is a Citation?

The central function of a legal citation is to allow the reader to efficiently locate the cited source. The Bluebook, A Uniform System of Citation is the standard style guide for legal citation in the United States.

When writing a seminar paper, follow the Bluebook's citation forms for law review footnotes rather than those for court documents and legal memoranda. For more information, see the Bluebook's front inside cover and Rule 2.

Several Bluebooks that are available for check out are kept at the Circulation Desk.

Reading Citations

• Case Citations
• Statutory Citations
• Regulatory Citations

Cases have traditionally been published in books called reporters. Even though you will probably never use the books to look up a case, most case citation formats continue to be based on the location of the case in a reporter.  

For example: Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

Roe and Wade = the parties in the case 410 = the volume number U.S. = the abbreviation of the reporter 113 = the page on which the case begins 1973 = the year the case was decided.

Since 2013, New Mexico has been one of a handful of states that uses a system of case citation that is not based on the case’s location in a reporter. You may run across both the old and new citation formats.

For example: Bianco v. Horror One Prods. , 2009-NMSC-006, 145 N.M. 551

Bianco and Horror One Prods = the parties in the case 2009 = the year the case was decided NMSC = the court that decided the case (here it is the New Mexico Supreme Court) 006 = the ordinal number of the case (here this was the 6th case the Court decided that year) 145 = the volume number N.M. = the abbreviation of the reporter 551 = the page on which the case begins.

For more information, see Bluebook Rule 10 and New Mexico Rules Annotated 23-112 .

Federal Statutes

There are three distinct citations for the federal laws passed by Congress. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 has the following citations: 

• Public Law 101-336 . When a law is passed, it is given a Public Law number that reflects the number of the Congress and the ordinal number of the legislation (here it was the 336 th law passed by the 101 st Congress).
• 104 Stat. 327 .  At the end of a congressional session, the Public Laws it passed are compiled, in chronological order, into bound books called the United States Statutes at Large , and referred to as session laws (here the law can be found in volume 104 of the set of books called the Statutes at Large , starting at page 327).
• 42 U.S.C. § 12101 . The United States Code is a topical arrangement of all the federal laws currently in effect (here 42 is the Title of the Code where this statute can be found, U.S.C. is the abbreviation of the United States Code , § is the section symbol, and 12101 is the section of title 42 where the statute can be found).

In addition, you may see the statute cited as 42 USCA § 12101 or 42 USCS § 12101 . Before information was available in digital format, the only option was to find it in books.  U.S.C. is the official version published by the government but it was slow and didn’t have many editorial enhancements. USCA ( United States Code Annotated ) and USCS ( United States Code Service ) were commercial, but unofficial versions that were available more quickly and offered more search options than the official. Today, you still see these distinctions in the online world. USCA is the version of the statutes found on Westlaw and USCS is version found on LexisNexis.

For more information, see Bluebook Rule 12.

State Statutes

State codes vary greatly. In New Mexico, you will see the following statutory citations:

• 2013 N.M. Laws, ch. 31, § 1 . This is the citation for a session law.  Here the law was passed by the legislature in 2013, it is published in bound books called Laws of New Mexico , and  can be found in chapter 31, section 1.
• NMSA 1978, § 66-7-302.1 (2013) . This is the citation for the same law as above in the New Mexico Statutes Annotated which is New Mexico’s topical arrangement of all the federal laws currently in effect. Here NMSA is the abbreviation for New Mexico Statutes Annotated , 1978 is the date the NMSA was last recodified, § is the section symbol, 66 is the chapter and 7-302.1 is the section number.  

For more information, see Bluebook Rule 12 and New Mexico Rules Annotated 23-112 .

The Federal Register is the daily diary of federal agency activity. Proposed and final regulations, as well as other notices and comments are published in it chronologically.

For example: Importation of Fruits and Vegetables, 60 Fed. Reg. 50,379 (Sept. 29, 1995)(to be codified at 7 C.F.R. pt. 300)

Importation of Fruits and Vegetables = common name of regulation 60 = volume number Fed. Reg. = abbreviation of Federal Register 50,379 = page number on which regulation (or discussion of it) begins Sept. 29, 1995 = date of the regulation to be codified at = Where the regulation will appear in the C.F.R., if given.

The Code of Federal Regulations is a topical arrangement of the federal regulations currently in effect.

For example: 7 C.F.R. § 319.76 (1999)

7 = C.F.R. title number C.F.R. = abbreviation of Code of Federal Regulations § 319.79 = section number and specific section cited 1999 = date of code edition cited.

New Mexico regulations are published in the New Mexico Administrative Code , which only exists in electronic format. Its is cited as 3.1.3.8 NMAC .

For more information, see Bluebook Rule 14 and New Mexico Rules Annotated 23-112 .

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Introduction to Legal Research: Citations

• Primary Authority - Cases
• Primary Authority - Statutes & Regulations
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What Do Citations Do?

No matter what you’re writing, the purpose of a citation is to allow the reader – judge, partner, professor – to find the law you’ve researched and compiled.  The citation needs to be correct with all the relevent pieces of information, that's why citation format is important. The legal community uses The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation  (now in its 20th edition) format rules. Also many courts have their own local citation rules that supplement or even replace  The Bluebook rules. A correct citation will:

• Identify  - identify the document or document part to which the author is referring
• Find  - provide the reader with sufficient information to find the document or document part in the sources the reader has available (which may or may not be the same sources as those used by the writer)
• Relation to argument  - furnish important additional information about the referenced material and its connection to the writer's argument so that a reader can decide whether or not to pursue the reference. This information is usually in a parenthetical note.
• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation
• Bluebook Citation Generator
• Bluebook 101 (University of Washington Law Library)
• Bluebook Guide (Georgetown Law Library)
• Tabbing Your Bluebook

See  list of common abbreviations . 

Court opinions and articles don’t change once published. There can be more recent articles on a subject. An author can change their mind about a topic but their orginal article remains as initially published. Court opinions can be effected by later decisions, the authoritative value can be reduced or eliminated but the text of the original opinion will remain the same.

We can take an opinion, stick it in a book, and just leave it there. But that’s not true for statutes and regulations. Every time a legislature meets some statute is going to change and when statutes change then the regulations change. Because of that dynamic character we don’t just stick statutes and regulations in books and leave them there. The books are updated regularly. So the citations to statutes and regulations have different numbering systems.

4 U.S.C. §553 

• First number is a title number
• Abbreviation is the United States Code ; you might also see USCA or USCS
• Second number is a section number

The U.S Code is a codification. That means it is a subject arrangement of all the U.S. statutes. Currently there are 54 "subjects" which are referred to as Titles. A particular section number is not necessarily unique so the title number is also necessary. 

There are official and unofficial versions of the U.S. Code. The government publishes the United States Code . The other two versions are publications of commercial companies but you may come across references to these codes in your reading.

United States Code Annotated (USCA) United States Code Service (USCS)

The reason people buy the commercial (also known as unofficial) versions of the code is because of the editorial enhancements. These enhancements, also referred to as annotations, help a researcher understand the meaning or application of a particular statute. If you already have a citation to a pertinent statute you can use it to help you research an issue. The citation above is to the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically the section on rule making (P.L. 79-404).

Ga. Code Ann. §8-2-21 (2004)

• No separate title number
• Section number is unique
• Date of publication

Each state has its own codification of its laws and there are a couple of different numbering schemes. Some use the title and section arrangement like the U.S. Code. Others, like Georgia, use a scheme in which the title is part of the complete section number. The title number is the first number of the chain of numbers. The date is the publication date of the volume itself, not the passage date of the statute. The citation above is to the state law requiring minimum building codes.

Legal journals or law reviews have a unique citation format dictated by  Bluebook  rules.

79 U. Cin. L. Rev. 375 (2010)

• First number is volume number; volume numbers can correspond to calendar years or academic years
• Second part is abbreviation of name of publication
• Second number is page number on which the article begins
• Number in parentheses is year of publication

The Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington has a nice table of abbreviations of law reviews and legal periodicals.

The citation is to an article entitled "Preserving the Right to a Jury Trial in Public Employee Free Speech Litigation: The Protected Status of Speech Must be Labeled a Mixed Question of Law and Fact". Titles to law review articles can be very long and descriptive.

COURT OPINION/DECISION

483 U.S. 378, 107 S. Ct. 2891 (1987) 

• First number is volume number
• Abbreviation U.S. is for United States Reports
• Second number is page number
• Number in parentheses is year of decision

There are actually two citations here, The second with "S.Ct." refers to another reporter, Supreme Court Reports . They both contain the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One is published by the government (U.S.), the other by a commercial publisher. This use of multiple citations to the same court opinion is referred to as parallel citation. The citation is to  Rankin v. McPherson , a case about free speech rights of public employees.

Sometimes courts require attorneys to include the parallel cite in documents filed with the court. Most courts have adopted The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (we just say Bluebook ) but some have adopted their own rules, some specify older Bluebook editions. Following the court rules on citation format is extremely important.

When Congress enacts a statute there is often a delegation of authority to an administrative agency to issue regulations. This is known as promulgation. The regulations are intended to carry out the intent of the legislature. They are more detailed and specific than the statute. If the regulations, sometimes called rules, are properly promulgated and fulfill the intent of the statute they have the same legal effect as statutes.

36 C.F.R. §800.4 (2011)

• Title number
• Abbreviation for Code of Federal Regulations
• Section number
• Year of specific edition cited

Year is important for regulations as the CFR is republished every year.

The regulation above is for the identification of historic properties under the §106 process. 

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Bluebook Citation Style

What is Bluebook Citation Style?

The Bluebook, a Uniform System of Citation, published by the Harvard Law Review, is the definitive style guide for the legal field. 

Citing U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

REFERENCE LIST ENTRY

Basic Format Name v. Name. Vol. number U.S. Page number. (Year).

Note: The volume and page numbers refer to U.S. Reports. All reporting services include this information. Ignore the "Cite As" at the head of the page in Supreme Court Reporter, because this form of the citation is not used in APA style.

Example: United States v. Lane, 474 U.S. 438 (1986).

TEXT CITATION

Examples: The Supreme Court has held in United States v. Lane (1986) that misjoinder under Rule 8(b) is subject to harmless-error analysis.

The Supreme Court has held that misjoinder under Rule 8(b) is subject to harmless-error analysis (United States v. Lane, 1986).

Citing Decisions of Lower Federal Courts

Basic Format Name v. Name, Volume number Reporter abbreviation Page number (Court Name).

Reporter Abbreviations  F., F.2d or F.3d for Federal Reporter (circuit courts) F. Supp. or F.Supp.2d for Federal Supplement (District Courts).

Examples Flibotte v. Pennsylvania Truck Lines, Inc., 131 F. 3d 21 (1st Cir. 1997). SBC Communications, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 981 F. Supp. 996 (N.D. Texas      1997).

Basic Form Name v. Name  (year ) or (Name v. Name, year)

Examples: In Flibotte v. Pennsylvania Truck Lines, Inc. (1997), the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that it is appropriate for a judge to refuse to direct the verdict. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has held that it is appropriate for a judge to refuse to direct the verdict (Flibotte v. Pennsylvania Truck Lines, Inc., 1997).

Citing Florida Decisions

Basic Form Name v. Name, Volume number Reporter abbreviation Page number (Court Name)

Examples Swofford v. Richards Enters., Inc., 515 So. 2d 231 (Fla. 1987). City of N. Miami v. Fla. Defenders of the Env't, 481 So. 2d 1196 (Fla. 1985).

Basic Form Name v. Name  (Year) or (Name v. Name, Year)

Examples In Silverleib v. Hebshie (1992), the Florida Court of Appeals held that an order for the removal of a sewer line is in the nature of an equitable order. The Florida Court of Appeals held that an order for the removal of a sewer line is in the nature of an equitable order (Silverleib v. Hebshie 1992).

Citing Federal Statutes

Cite a statute in its location in the U.S. Code. Alternatively, cite the statute in its original publication in the Statutes at Large, rather than in the code. This is usually done when the statute is an appropriation, has been repealed, or has its contents scattered in different parts of the Code.

Basic form Name of Act § Section number, Volume number U.S.C. § Section number (Year). Name of Act, Pub. L. No. Number , § Section number, Volume number Stat. Page number.

Examples National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 § 102, 42 U.S.C. § 4332 (1994). Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-336, § 2, 104 Stat. 328 (1991).

Basic form Name of Act (Year) Name of Act of Year

The National Environmental Policy Act (1969) established the Council on Environmental Quality. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 established the Council on Environmental Quality.

Citing Public Laws

Federal Laws

Title, Public Law number, vol Stat. page (date)

ADA Amendments Act of 2008, Public Law 110–325, 122 Stat. 3553 (2008).

Text Citation

ADA Amendments Act (2008)

Citing Florida Statutes

Basic Form Source § Chapter (date)

Examples Fla. Stat. § 671.1-101  (1973)

Fla. Stat. Ann. § 671.1-101  (1973)

Fla. Stat. Ann. § 671.1-101 (1973) 

§ 671.1-101, Fla. Stat. (1973)

Example: Section 216.177 (2016) of the Florida Statutes governs the form and content of the annual statement of intent that accompanies each General Appropriations Act

Florida Administrative Code

Cite as 

Source Section (Date)

Fla. Admin. Code R. 8H-3.02

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Law and Paralegal: Legal Citation

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What is Legal Citation?

When lawyers present legal arguments and judges write opinions, they cite authority. They support their representations of what the law is and how it applies to a given situation with references to statutes, regulations, and prior appellate decisions they believe to be pertinent and supporting. They also refer to persuasive secondary literature such as journal articles. As a consequence, those who read and do law writing must master a new, technical language – "legal citation." Known by the color of its cover, The Bluebook was the codification of professional norms that introduced generations of law students to "legal citation."

Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (online ed. 2012: http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/) by Peter W. Martin

Introduction to Basic Legal Citations

Cornell University Law School provides example citations for formatting legal citations: 

§ 2-210. Case Citations – Most Common Form

§ 2-200. How to Cite Judicial Opinions

§ 2-300. How to Cite Constitutions, Statutes, and Similar Materials

§ 2-400. How to Cite Regulations, Other Agency and Executive Material

§ 2-700. How to Cite Books

§ 2-800. How to Cite Articles and Other Law Journal Writing

§ 7-500. Table of State-Specific Citation Norms and Practices (Search for Wisconsin) 

Specific Formatting Citation Questions

§ 4-500. State Abbreviations

§ 5-000. UNDERLINING AND ITALICS

Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (online ed. 2017  https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/  by Peter W. Martin )

Introduction to the Bluebook

Legal Citation Sites

• Basic Legal Citation Excellent introductory page explaining legal citation put together by the Cornell University Virtual Law Reference Desk.
• Bluebook Guide Excellent introductory guide on using the Bluebook from the Georgetown University Law School.
• Georgetown Law Bluebook Guide Includes examples and basic principles of Bluebook citation for new law students
• Official Bluebook Site Has helpful FAQs, but requires registeration for most of the information.
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According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.,  "Existing legal references are usually already written in legal style and require few, if any, changes for an APA style reference list entry" (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 355). In other words, APA defers to the Bluebook style, a popular legal citation style, when citing legal resources. 

Academic Writer includes examples of APA-style citations for various legal resource types. The citation examples are included in the Learn Tab. Once in the Learn Tab, click on "Go to Sample References," then click on Legal.

Find the references for the type of legal resource being cited to use as a model.

Indigo Book

The Indigo Book: A Manual of Legal Citation  is a free version of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, a popular legal citation style used in the United States. The Bluebook was created by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Review in the editing of law review articles for their respective publications. The first two chapters of the Bluebook, printed on blue paper, is an introduction to legal citation developed for practitioners and law clerks, thus the name of the Indigo Book.

Using the Indigo Book

Consult the table of contents to find the legal resource type being cited. The table of contents is hyperlinked, so click on the chapter needed (for example, Cases). View the instructions and examples to create a Bluebook-style citations.

Additional Resources

• A Bluebook Guide for Law Students
• Bluebook Quick Style Guide
• Citing Legally Blog
• Cornell University Law School LII Citation Guide Introduction to basic legal citation
• Georgetown Law Library Bluebook Guide

Reading a Legal Citation

Court opinion.

Published court opinions appear chronologically in case reporters for the case jurisdiction. The citation consists of the volume number of the case reporter, an abbreviation for the case reporter, and the page number where the opinion begins in the reporter.

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How to do legal research in 3 steps

Knowing where to start a difficult legal research project can be a challenge. But if you already understand the basics of legal research, the process can be significantly easier — not to mention quicker.

Solid research skills are crucial to crafting a winning argument. So, whether you are a law school student or a seasoned attorney with years of experience, knowing how to perform legal research is important — including where to start and the steps to follow.

What is legal research, and where do I start? 

Black's Law Dictionary defines legal research as “[t]he finding and assembling of authorities that bear on a question of law." But what does that actually mean? It means that legal research is the process you use to identify and find the laws — including statutes, regulations, and court opinions — that apply to the facts of your case.

In most instances, the purpose of legal research is to find support for a specific legal issue or decision. For example, attorneys must conduct legal research if they need court opinions — that is, case law — to back up a legal argument they are making in a motion or brief filed with the court.

Alternatively, lawyers may need legal research to provide clients with accurate legal guidance . In the case of law students, they often use legal research to complete memos and briefs for class. But these are just a few situations in which legal research is necessary.

Why is legal research hard?

Each step — from defining research questions to synthesizing findings — demands critical thinking and rigorous analysis.

1. Identifying the legal issue is not so straightforward. Legal research involves interpreting many legal precedents and theories to justify your questions. Finding the right issue takes time and patience.

2. There's too much to research. Attorneys now face a great deal of case law and statutory material. The sheer volume forces the researcher to be efficient by following a methodology based on a solid foundation of legal knowledge and principles.

3. The law is a fluid doctrine. It changes with time, and staying updated with the latest legal codes, precedents, and statutes means the most resourceful lawyer needs to assess the relevance and importance of new decisions.

Legal research can pose quite a challenge, but professionals can improve it at every stage of the process . 

Step 1: Key questions to ask yourself when starting legal research

Before you begin looking for laws and court opinions, you first need to define the scope of your legal research project. There are several key questions you can use to help do this.

What are the facts?

Always gather the essential facts so you know the “who, what, why, when, where, and how” of your case. Take the time to write everything down, especially since you will likely need to include a statement of facts in an eventual filing or brief anyway. Even if you don't think a fact may be relevant now, write it down because it may be relevant later. These facts will also be helpful when identifying your legal issue.

What is the actual legal issue?

You will never know what to research if you don't know what your legal issue is. Does your client need help collecting money from an insurance company following a car accident involving a negligent driver? How about a criminal case involving excluding evidence found during an alleged illegal stop?

No matter the legal research project, you must identify the relevant legal problem and the outcome or relief sought. This information will guide your research so you can stay focused and on topic.

What is the relevant jurisdiction?

Don't cast your net too wide regarding legal research; you should focus on the relevant jurisdiction. For example, does your case deal with federal or state law? If it is state law, which state? You may find a case in California state court that is precisely on point, but it won't be beneficial if your legal project involves New York law.

Where to start legal research: The library, online, or even AI?

In years past, future attorneys were trained in law school to perform research in the library. But now, you can find almost everything from the library — and more — online. While you can certainly still use the library if you want, you will probably be costing yourself valuable time if you do.

When it comes to online research, some people start with free legal research options , including search engines like Google or Bing. But to ensure your legal research is comprehensive, you will want to use an online research service designed specifically for the law, such as Westlaw . Not only do online solutions like Westlaw have all the legal sources you need, but they also include artificial intelligence research features that help make quick work of your research

Step 2: How to find relevant case law and other primary sources of law

Now that you have gathered the facts and know your legal issue, the next step is knowing what to look for. After all, you will need the law to support your legal argument, whether providing guidance to a client or writing an internal memo, brief, or some other legal document.

But what type of law do you need? The answer: primary sources of law. Some of the more important types of primary law include:

• Case law, which are court opinions or decisions issued by federal or state courts
• Statutes, including legislation passed by both the U.S. Congress and state lawmakers
• Regulations, including those issued by either federal or state agencies
• Constitutions, both federal and state

Searching for primary sources of law

So, if it's primary law you want, it makes sense to begin searching there first, right? Not so fast. While you will need primary sources of law to support your case, in many instances, it is much easier — and a more efficient use of your time — to begin your search with secondary sources such as practice guides, treatises, and legal articles.

Why? Because secondary sources provide a thorough overview of legal topics, meaning you don't have to start your research from scratch. After secondary sources, you can move on to primary sources of law.

For example, while no two legal research projects are the same, the order in which you will want to search different types of sources may look something like this:

• Secondary sources . If you are researching a new legal principle or an unfamiliar area of the law, the best place to start is secondary sources, including law journals, practice guides , legal encyclopedias, and treatises. They are a good jumping-off point for legal research since they've already done the work for you. As an added bonus, they can save you additional time since they often identify and cite important statutes and seminal cases.
• Case law . If you have already found some case law in secondary sources, great, you have something to work with. But if not, don't fret. You can still search for relevant case law in a variety of ways, including running a search in a case law research tool.

Once you find a helpful case, you can use it to find others. For example, in Westlaw, most cases contain headnotes that summarize each of the case's important legal issues. These headnotes are also assigned a Key Number based on the topic associated with that legal issue. So, once you find a good case, you can use the headnotes and Key Numbers within it to quickly find more relevant case law.

• Statutes and regulations . In many instances, secondary sources and case law list the statutes and regulations relevant to your legal issue. But if you haven't found anything yet, you can still search for statutes and regs online like you do with cases.

Once you know which statute or reg is pertinent to your case, pull up the annotated version on Westlaw. Why the annotated version? Because the annotations will include vital information, such as a list of important cases that cite your statute or reg. Sometimes, these cases are even organized by topic — just one more way to find the case law you need to support your legal argument.

Keep in mind, though, that legal research isn't always a linear process. You may start out going from source to source as outlined above and then find yourself needing to go back to secondary sources once you have a better grasp of the legal issue. In other instances, you may even find the answer you are looking for in a source not listed above, like a sample brief filed with the court by another attorney. Ultimately, you need to go where the information takes you.

Step 3: Make sure you are using ‘good’ law

One of the most important steps with every legal research project is to verify that you are using “good" law — meaning a court hasn't invalidated it or struck it down in some way. After all, it probably won't look good to a judge if you cite a case that has been overruled or use a statute deemed unconstitutional. It doesn't necessarily mean you can never cite these sources; you just need to take a closer look before you do.

The simplest way to find out if something is still good law is to use a legal tool known as a citator, which will show you subsequent cases that have cited your source as well as any negative history, including if it has been overruled, reversed, questioned, or merely differentiated.

For instance, if a case, statute, or regulation has any negative history — and therefore may no longer be good law — KeyCite, the citator on Westlaw, will warn you. Specifically, KeyCite will show a flag or icon at the top of the document, along with a little blurb about the negative history. This alert system allows you to quickly know if there may be anything you need to worry about.

Some examples of these flags and icons include:

• A red flag on a case warns you it is no longer good for at least one point of law, meaning it may have been overruled or reversed on appeal.
• A yellow flag on a case warns that it has some negative history but is not expressly overruled or reversed, meaning another court may have criticized it or pointed out the holding was limited to a specific fact pattern.
• A blue-striped flag on a case warns you that it has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals.
• The KeyCite Overruling Risk icon on a case warns you that the case may be implicitly undermined because it relies on another case that has been overruled.

Another bonus of using a citator like KeyCite is that it also provides a list of other cases that merely cite your source — it can lead to additional sources you previously didn't know about.

Perseverance is vital when it comes to legal research

Given that legal research is a complex process, it will likely come as no surprise that this guide cannot provide everything you need to know.

There is a reason why there are entire law school courses and countless books focused solely on legal research methodology. In fact, many attorneys will spend their entire careers honing their research skills — and even then, they may not have perfected the process.

So, if you are just beginning, don't get discouraged if you find legal research difficult — almost everyone does at first. With enough time, patience, and dedication, you can master the art of legal research.

Thomson Reuters originally published this article on November 10, 2020.

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Legal Research Strategy

Preliminary analysis, organization, secondary sources, primary sources, updating research, identifying an end point, getting help, about this guide.

This guide will walk a beginning researcher though the legal research process step-by-step. These materials are created with the 1L Legal Research & Writing course in mind. However, these resources will also assist upper-level students engaged in any legal research project.

How to Strategize

Legal research must be comprehensive and precise.  One contrary source that you miss may invalidate other sources you plan to rely on.  Sticking to a strategy will save you time, ensure completeness, and improve your work product. 

Follow These Steps

Running Time: 3 minutes, 13 seconds.

Make sure that you don't miss any steps by using our:

• Legal Research Strategy Checklist

If you get stuck at any time during the process, check this out:

• Ten Tips for Moving Beyond the Brick Wall in the Legal Research Process, by Marsha L. Baum

Understanding the Legal Questions

A legal question often originates as a problem or story about a series of events. In law school, these stories are called fact patterns. In practice, facts may arise from a manager or an interview with a potential client. Start by doing the following:

• Read anything you have been given
• Analyze the facts and frame the legal issues
• Assess what you know and need to learn
• Note the jurisdiction and any primary law you have been given
• Generate potential search terms

Jurisdiction

Legal rules will vary depending on where geographically your legal question will be answered. You must determine the jurisdiction in which your claim will be heard. These resources can help you learn more about jurisdiction and how it is determined:

• Legal Treatises on Jurisdiction
• LII Wex Entry on Jurisdiction

This map indicates which states are in each federal appellate circuit:

Getting Started

Once you have begun your research, you will need to keep track of your work. Logging your research will help you to avoid missing sources and explain your research strategy. You will likely be asked to explain your research process when in practice. Researchers can keep paper logs, folders on Westlaw or Lexis, or online citation management platforms.

Organizational Methods

Tracking with paper or excel.

Many researchers create their own tracking charts.  Be sure to include:

• Search Date
• Topics/Keywords/Search Strategy
• Citation to Relevant Source Found
• Save Locations
• Follow Up Needed

Consider using the following research log as a starting place: 

• Sample Research Log

Tracking with Folders

Westlaw and Lexis offer options to create folders, then save and organize your materials there.

• Lexis Advance Folders
• Westlaw Edge Folders

Tracking with Citation Management Software

For long term projects, platforms such as Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, or Refworks might be useful. These are good tools to keep your research well organized. Note, however, that none of these platforms substitute for doing your own proper Bluebook citations. Learn more about citation management software on our other research guides:

• Guide to Zotero for Harvard Law Students by Harvard Law School Library Research Services Last Updated Sep 12, 2023 278 views this year

Types of Sources

There are three different types of sources: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.  When doing legal research you will be using mostly primary and secondary sources.  We will explore these different types of sources in the sections below.

Secondary sources often explain legal principles more thoroughly than a single case or statute. Starting with them can help you save time.

Secondary sources are particularly useful for:

• Learning the basics of a particular area of law
• Understanding key terms of art in an area
• Identifying essential cases and statutes

Consider the following when deciding which type of secondary source is right for you:

• Scope/Breadth
• Depth of Treatment
• Currentness/Reliability

For a deep dive into secondary sources visit:

• Secondary Sources: ALRs, Encyclopedias, Law Reviews, Restatements, & Treatises by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 4710 views this year

Legal Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Legal dictionaries.

Legal dictionaries are similar to other dictionaries that you have likely used before.

• Black's Law Dictionary
• Ballentine's Law Dictionary

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics, providing introductions and explaining terms of art. They also provide citations to primary law and relevant major law review articles.  

Here are the two major national encyclopedias:

• American Jurisprudence (AmJur) This resource is also available in Westlaw & Lexis .
• Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS)

Treatises are books on legal topics.  These books are a good place to begin your research.  They provide explanation, analysis, and citations to the most relevant primary sources. Treatises range from single subject overviews to deep treatments of broad subject areas.

It is important to check the date when the treatise was published. Many are either not updated, or are updated through the release of newer editions.

To find a relevant treatise explore:

• Legal Treatises by Subject by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 3742 views this year

American Law Reports (ALR)

American Law Reports (ALR) contains in-depth articles on narrow topics of the law. ALR articles, are often called annotations. They provide background, analysis, and citations to relevant cases, statutes, articles, and other annotations. ALR annotations are invaluable tools to quickly find primary law on narrow legal questions.

This resource is available in both Westlaw and Lexis:

• American Law Reports on Westlaw (includes index)
• American Law Reports on Lexis

Law Reviews & Journals

Law reviews are scholarly publications, usually edited by law students in conjunction with faculty members. They contain both lengthy articles and shorter essays by professors and lawyers. They also contain comments, notes, or developments in the law written by law students. Articles often focus on new or emerging areas of law and may offer critical commentary. Some law reviews are dedicated to a particular topic while others are general. Occasionally, law reviews will include issues devoted to proceedings of panels and symposia.

Law review and journal articles are extremely narrow and deep with extensive references. 

To find law review articles visit:

• Law Journal Library on HeinOnline
• Law Reviews & Journals on LexisNexis
• Law Reviews & Journals on Westlaw

Restatements

Restatements are highly regarded distillations of common law, prepared by the American Law Institute (ALI). ALI is a prestigious organization comprised of judges, professors, and lawyers. They distill the "black letter law" from cases to indicate trends in common law. Resulting in a “restatement” of existing common law into a series of principles or rules. Occasionally, they make recommendations on what a rule of law should be.

Restatements are not primary law. However, they are considered persuasive authority by many courts.

Restatements are organized into chapters, titles, and sections.  Sections contain the following:

• a concisely stated rule of law,
• comments to clarify the rule,
• hypothetical examples,
• explanation of purpose, and
• exceptions to the rule  

To access restatements visit:

• American Law Institute Library on HeinOnline
• Restatements & Principles of the Law on LexisNexis
• Restatements & Principles of Law on Westlaw

Primary Authority

Primary authority is "authority that issues directly from a law-making body."   Authority , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).   Sources of primary authority include:

• Constitutions
• Statutes 

Regulations

Access to primary legal sources is available through:

• Bloomberg Law
• Free & Low Cost Alternatives

Statutes (also called legislation) are "laws enacted by legislative bodies", such as Congress and state legislatures.  Statute , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

We typically start primary law research here. If there is a controlling statute, cases you look for later will interpret that law. There are two types of statutes, annotated and unannotated.

Annotated codes are a great place to start your research. They combine statutory language with citations to cases, regulations, secondary sources, and other relevant statutes. This can quickly connect you to the most relevant cases related to a particular law. Unannotated Codes provide only the text of the statute without editorial additions. Unannotated codes, however, are more often considered official and used for citation purposes.

For a deep dive on federal and state statutes, visit:

• Statutes: US and State Codes by Mindy Kent Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 3081 views this year
• 50 State Surveys

Want to learn more about the history or legislative intent of a law?  Learn how to get started here:

• Legislative History Get an introduction to legislative histories in less than 5 minutes.
• Federal Legislative History Research Guide

Regulations are rules made by executive departments and agencies. Not every legal question will require you to search regulations. However, many areas of law are affected by regulations. So make sure not to skip this step if they are relevant to your question.

To learn more about working with regulations, visit:

• Administrative Law Research by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 587 views this year

Case Basics

In many areas, finding relevant caselaw will comprise a significant part of your research. This Is particularly true in legal areas that rely heavily on common law principles.

Running Time: 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

Unpublished Cases

Up to  86% of federal case opinions are unpublished. You must determine whether your jurisdiction will consider these unpublished cases as persuasive authority. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure have an overarching rule, Rule 32.1  Each circuit also has local rules regarding citations to unpublished opinions. You must understand both the Federal Rule and the rule in your jurisdiction.

• Federal and Local Rules of Appellate Procedure 32.1 (Dec. 2021).
• Type of Opinion or Order Filed in Cases Terminated on the Merits, by Circuit (Sept. 2021).

Each state also has its own local rules which can often be accessed through:

• State Bar Associations
• State Courts Websites

First Circuit

• First Circuit Court Rule 32.1.0

Second Circuit

• Second Circuit Court Rule 32.1.1

Third Circuit

• Third Circuit Court Rule 5.7

Fourth Circuit

• Fourth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Fifth Circuit

• Fifth Circuit Court Rule 47.5

Sixth Circuit

• Sixth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Seventh Circuit

• Seventh Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Eighth Circuit

• Eighth Circuit Court Rule 32.1A

Ninth Circuit

• Ninth Circuit Court Rule 36-3

Tenth Circuit

• Tenth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Eleventh Circuit

• Eleventh Circuit Court Rule 32.1

D.C. Circuit

• D.C. Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Federal Circuit

• Federal Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Finding Cases

Headnotes show the key legal points in a case. Legal databases use these headnotes to guide researchers to other cases on the same topic. They also use them to organize concepts explored in cases by subject. Publishers, like Westlaw and Lexis, create headnotes, so they are not consistent across databases.

Headnotes are organized by subject into an outline that allows you to search by subject. This outline is known as a "digest of cases." By browsing or searching the digest you can retrieve all headnotes covering a particular topic. This can help you identify particularly important cases on the relevant subject.

Running Time: 4 minutes, 43 seconds.

Each major legal database has its own digest:

• Topic Navigator (Lexis)
• Key Digest System (Westlaw)

Start by identifying a relevant topic in a digest.  Then you can limit those results to your jurisdiction for more relevant results.  Sometimes, you can keyword search within only the results on your topic in your jurisdiction.  This is a particularly powerful research method.

One Good Case Method

After following the steps above, you will have identified some relevant cases on your topic. You can use good cases you find to locate other cases addressing the same topic. These other cases often apply similar rules to a range of diverse fact patterns.

• in Lexis click "More Like This Headnote"
• in Westlaw click "Cases that Cite This Headnote"

to focus on the terms of art or key words in a particular headnote. You can use this feature to find more cases with similar language and concepts.  ​

Ways to Use Citators

A citator is "a catalogued list of cases, statutes, and other legal sources showing the subsequent history and current precedential value of those sources.  Citators allow researchers to verify the authority of a precedent and to find additional sources relating to a given subject." Citator , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

Each major legal database has its own citator.  The two most popular are Keycite on Westlaw and Shepard's on Lexis.

• Keycite Information Page
• Shepard's Information Page

Making Sure Your Case is Still Good Law

This video answers common questions about citators:

For step-by-step instructions on how to use Keycite and Shepard's see the following:

• Shepard's Video Tutorial
• Shepard's Handout
• Shepard's Editorial Phrase Dictionary
• KeyCite Video Tutorial
• KeyCite Handout
• KeyCite Editorial Phrase Dictionary

Using Citators For

Citators serve three purposes: (1) case validation, (2) better understanding, and (3) additional research.

Case Validation

Is my case or statute good law?

• Parallel citations
• Prior and subsequent history
• Negative treatment suggesting you should no longer cite to holding.

Better Understanding

Has the law in this area changed?

• Later cases on the same point of law
• Positive treatment, explaining or expanding the law.
• Negative Treatment, narrowing or distinguishing the law.

Track Research

Who is citing and writing about my case or statute?

• Secondary sources that discuss your case or statute.
• Cases in other jurisdictions that discuss your case or statute.

Knowing When to Start Writing

For more guidance on when to stop your research see:

• Terminating Research, by Christina L. Kunz

Automated Services

Automated services can check your work and ensure that you are not missing important resources. You can learn more about several automated brief check services.  However, these services are not a replacement for conducting your own diligent research .

• Automated Brief Check Instructional Video

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How to Conduct Legal Research

September 21, 2021

Conducting legal research can challenge even the most skilled law practitioners.

As laws evolve across jurisdictions, it can be a difficult to keep pace with every legal development. Equally daunting is the ability to track and glean insights into stakeholder strategies and legal responses. Without quick and easy access to the right tools, the legal research upon which case strategy hinges may face cost, personnel, and litigation outcome challenges.

Bloomberg Law’s artificial intelligence-driven tools drastically reduce the time to perform legal research. Whether you seek quick answers to legal research definitions, or general guidance on the legal research process, Bloomberg Law’s Core Litigation Skills Toolkit has you covered.

What is legal research?

Legal research is the process of uncovering and understanding all of the legal precedents, laws, regulations, and other legal authorities that apply in a case and inform an attorney’s course of action.

Legal research often involves case law research, which is the practice of identifying and interpreting the most relevant cases concerning the topic at issue. Legal research can also involve a deep dive into a judge’s past rulings or opposing counsel’s record of success.

Research is not a process that has a finite start and end, but remains ongoing throughout every phase of a legal matter. It is a cornerstone of a litigator’s skills.

[Learn how our integrated, time-saving litigation research tools allow litigators to streamline their work and get answers quickly.]

Where do I begin my legal research?

Beginning your legal research will look different for each assignment. At the outset, ensure that you understand your goal by asking questions and taking careful notes. Ask about background case information, logistical issues such as filing deadlines, the client/matter number, and billing instructions.

It’s also important to consider how your legal research will be used. Is the research to be used for a pending motion? If you are helping with a motion for summary judgment, for example, your goal is to find cases that are in the same procedural posture as yours and come out favorably for your side (i.e., if your client is the one filing the motion, try to find cases where a motion for summary judgment was granted, not denied). Keep in mind the burden of proof for different kinds of motions.

Finally, but no less important, assess the key facts of the case. Who are the relevant parties? Where is the jurisdiction? Who is the judge? Note all case details that come to mind.

What if I’m new to the practice area or specific legal issue?

While conducting legal research, it is easy to go down rabbit holes. Resist the urge to start by reviewing individual cases, which may prove irrelevant. Start instead with secondary sources, which often provide a prevailing statement of the law for a specific topic. These sources will save time and orient you to the area of the law and key issues.

Litigation Practical Guidance provides the essentials including step-by-step guidance, expert legal analysis, and a preview of next steps. Source citations are included in all Practical Guidance, and you can filter Points of Law, Smart Code®, and court opinions searches to get the jurisdiction-specific cases or statutes you need.

Searching across Points of Law will help to get your bearings on an issue before diving into reading the cases in full. Points of Law uses machine learning to identify key legal principles expressed in court opinions, which are easily searchable by keyword and jurisdiction. This tool helps you quickly find other cases that have expressed the same Point of Law, and directs you to related Points of Law that might be relevant to your research. It is automatically updated with the most recent opinions, saving you time and helping you quickly drill down to the relevant cases.

How do I respond to the opposing side’s brief?

Whether a brief is yours or that of the opposing party, Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer is an essential component in the legal research process. It reduces the time spent analyzing a brief, identifying relevant authorities, and preparing a solid response.

To start, navigate to Brief Analyzer available from the Bloomberg Law homepage, within the Litigation Intelligence Center , or from Docket Key search results for briefs.

Simply upload the opposing side’s brief into the tool, and Brief Analyzer will generate a report of the cited authorities and arguments contained in the brief.

You can easily view a comparison with the brief and analysis side by side. It will also point you directly to relevant cases, Points of Law, and Practical Guidance to jump start your research.

[ How to Write a Legal Brief – Learn how to shorten the legal research cycle and give your legal brief a competitive advantage.]

How to optimize your search.

Crafting searches is a critical skill when it comes to legal research. Although many legal research platforms, including Bloomberg Law, offer natural language searching, terms and connectors (also called Boolean) searching is still a vital legal research skill and should be used when searching across court opinions, dockets, Points of Law, and other primary and secondary sources.

When you conduct a natural language search, the search engine applies algorithms to rank your results. Why a certain case is ranked as it is may not be obvious. This makes it harder to interpret whether the search is giving you everything you need. It is also harder to efficiently and effectively manipulate your search terms to zero in on the results you want. Using Boolean searching gives you better control over your search and greater confidence in your results.

The good news? Bloomberg Law does not charge by the search for court opinion searches. If your initial search was much too broad or much too narrow, you do not have to worry about immediately running a new and improved search.

Follow these tips when beginning a search to ensure that you do not miss relevant materials:

• Make sure you do not have typos in your search string.
• Search the appropriate source or section of the research platform. It is possible to search only within a practice area, jurisdiction, secondary resource, or other grouping of materials.
• Make sure you know which terms and connectors are utilized by the platform you are working on and what they mean – there is no uniform standard set of terms of connectors utilized by all platforms.
• Include in your search all possible terms the court might use, or alternate ways the court may address an issue. It is best to group the alternatives together within a parenthetical, connected by OR between each term.
• Consider including single and multiple character wildcards when relevant. Using a single character wildcard (an asterisk) and/or a multiple character wildcard (an exclamation point) helps you capture all word variations – even those you might not have envisioned.
• Try using a tool that helps you find additional relevant case law. When you find relevant authority, use BCITE on Bloomberg Law to find all other cases and/or sources that cite back to that case. When in BCITE, click on the Citing Documents tab, and search by keyword to narrow the results. Alternatively, you can use the court’s language or ruling to search Points of Law and find other cases that addressed the same issue or reached the same ruling.

[Bloomberg Law subscribers can access a complete checklist of search term best practices . Not a subscriber? Request a Demo .]

How can legal research help with drafting or strategy?

Before drafting a motion or brief, search for examples of what firm lawyers filed with the court in similar cases. You can likely find recent examples in your firm’s internal document system or search Bloomberg Law’s dockets. If possible, look for things filed before the same judge so you can get a quick check on rules/procedures to be followed (and by the same partner when possible so you can get an idea of their style preferences).

Careful docket search provides a wealth of information about relevant cases, jurisdictions, judges, and opposing counsel. On Bloomberg Law, type “Dockets Search” in the Go bar or find the dockets search box in the Litigation Intelligence Center .

If you do not know the specific docket number and/or court, use the docket search functionality Docket Key . Select from any of 20 categories, including motions, briefs, and orders, across all 94 federal district courts, to pinpoint the exact filing of choice.

Dockets can also help you access lots of information to guide your case strategy. For example, if you are considering filing a particular type of motion, such as a sanctions motion, you can use dockets to help determine how frequently your judge grants sanctions motions. You can also use dockets to see how similar cases before your judge proceeded through discovery.

If you are researching expert witnesses, you can use dockets to help determine if the expert has been recently excluded from a case, or whether their opinion has been limited. If so, this will help you determine whether the expert is a good fit for your case.

Dockets are a powerful research tool that allow you to search across filings to support your argument. Stay apprised of docket updates with the “Create Alert” option on Bloomberg Law.

Dive deeper into competitive research.

For even more competitive research insights, dive into Bloomberg Law’s Litigation Analytics – this is available in the Litigation tab on the homepage. Data here helps attorneys develop litigation strategy, predict possible outcomes, and better advise clients.

To start, under Litigation Analytics , leverage the Attorney tab to view case history and preview legal strategies the opposition may practice against you. Also, within Litigation Analytics, use the Court tab to get aggregate motion and appeal outcome rates across all federal courts, with the option to run comparisons across jurisdictions, and filter by company, law firm, and attorney.

Use the Judge tab to glean insights from cited opinions, and past and current decisions by motion and appeal outcomes. Also view litigation analytics in the right rail of court opinions.

Docket search can also offer intel on your opponent. Has your opponent filed similar lawsuits or made similar arguments before? How did those cases pan out? You can learn a lot about an opponent from past appearances in court.

How do I validate case law citations?

Checking the status of case law is essential in legal research. Rely on Bloomberg Law’s proprietary citator, BCITE. This time-saving tool lets you know if a case is still good law.

Under each court opinion, simply look to the right rail. There, you will see a thumbnail icon for “BCITE Analysis.” Click on the icon, and you will be provided quick links to direct history (opinions that affect or are affected by the outcome of the case at issue); case analysis (citing cases, with filter and search options), table of authorities, and citing documents.

How should I use technology to improve my legal research?

A significant benefit of digital research platforms and analytics is increased efficiency. Modern legal research technology helps attorneys sift through thousands of cases quickly and comprehensively. These products can also help aggregate or summarize data in a way that is more useful and make associations instantaneously.

For example, before litigation analytics were common, a partner may have asked a junior associate to find all summary judgment motions ruled on by a specific judge to determine how often that judge grants or denies them. The attorney could have done so by manually searching over PACER and/or by searching through court opinions, but that would take a long time. Now, Litigation Analytics can aggregate that data and provide an answer in seconds. Understanding that such products exist can be a game changer. Automating parts of the research process frees up time and effort for other activities that benefit the client and makes legal research and writing more efficient.

[Read our article: Six ways legal technology aids your litigation workflow .]

Tools like  Points of Law ,  dockets  and  Brief Analyzer  can also increase efficiency, especially when narrowing your research to confirm that you found everything on point. In the past, attorneys had to spend many hours (and lots of money) running multiple court opinion searches to ensure they did not miss a case on point. Now, there are tools that can dramatically speed up that process. For example, running a search over Points of Law can immediately direct you to other cases that discuss that same legal principle.

However, it’s important to remember that digital research and analytical tools should be seen as enhancing the legal research experience, not displacing the review, analysis, and judgment of an attorney. An attorney uses his or her knowledge of their client, the facts, the precedent, expert opinions, and his or her own experiences to predict the likely result in a given matter. Digital research products enhance this process by providing more data on a wider array of variables so that an attorney can take even more information into consideration.

[Get all your questions answered, request a Bloomberg Law demo , and more.]

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Why Cite Your Sources?

How do i cite, what do i cite.

When you write a research paper, you use information and facts from a variety of resources to support your own ideas or to help you develop new ones. Books, articles, caselaw, videos, interviews, and Web sites are some examples of sources you might use. Citing these sources of information in your work is essential because:

• It gives credit to the author of the original work who provided you with the information or idea.
• It allows your audience to identify and find the source material in order to learn more about your topic.
• It gives your paper more credibility because it shows you're supporting your arguments with high-quality sources.

You will need to cite your sources in two places:

• Within your work at the place where you are incorporating the information.
• In a comprehensive list of all sources you’ve cited throughout the paper.

How you cite depends on which style manual you are using. For “in-text” references some styles require parenthetical citations, while others require footnotes/endnotes. The list of all sources used is also laid out depending on the style you use.

Legal materials have their own citation style

Your instructor may ask you to use that style, often referred to as  Blue Book style, or one of the other citation styles.

The important thing is to be consistent; whatever style you use, make sure you use it throughout the entire paper.

• Legal References (Laws & Cases)
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• NoodleTools Express

Cite all outside sources you use in your research paper! Citing is required for sources you quote word-for-word, for sources you paraphrase (rewrite using your own words), and for sources from which you summarize ideas within your work.

Quote Example:

The quote below appears exactly as it does in Joanna Santa Barbara's article on child-rearing in the Encyclopedia of Violence Peace and Conflict .

“Adjusted data from seven U.S. surveys between 1968 and 1994 show a decline in approval of disciplinary spanking from 94% to 68%, or 26 percentage points in 26 years” (Santa Barbara 243).

Paraphrase Example:

This sentence takes the information above and puts it into the author’s own words.

Studies show that Americans are becoming more critical of the concept of spanking children. Between 1968 and 1994 the so-called “approval rating” of spanking children dropped from 94% to 68% (Santa Barbara 243).

Summarize Example:

The sentence below distills the main idea of the original information.

Studies have shown that Americans just don't approve of spanking like they used to (Santa Barbara 243).

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• Last Updated: Feb 27, 2024 3:15 PM
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Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY-NC 4.0 Licenses .

Skip to Main Content - Keyboard Accessible

Legal research.

Legal research is research conducted in order to find " authority " that will aid in finding a solution to a legal problem. 

• Examples are statutes , regulations , court orders , and court decisions . They are generated by  legislatures , courts , and administrative agencies . 
• The resources available to find legal authority are vast and complicated, leading many law schools to require students to take a class in legal research. See  Legal education .

Finding tools enable a researcher to find and interpret legal authority. Initially, many researchers turn to tools that provide summaries of a particular area of the law. Some examples are legal encyclopedias, treatises , and the  American Law Reports  ( ALR ). Law reviews and legal periodical articles provide interpretation of the law as well as detailed articles on particular legal topics. These interpretations may be found through indexes such as the  Index to Legal Periodicals . Restatements provide detailed summaries of what the law generally is or what the restatement writers believe the law should be. The citations to other authorities and annotations provided in legal encyclopedias, treatises, American Law Reports, law reviews, and legal periodicals are an important element of their value in the research process.

There are also several specialized finding tools that enable one to search for relevant materials in primary authorities. The index volumes for statutes and regulations compilations provide a quick guide to relevant rules and regulations. There are also privately published versions of annotated statutes. Case reporters contain the decisions in cases that have been deemed important enough to publish . Case digests enable a researcher to look up a particular area of the law and find a list of case decisions that are "reported" in relevant case reporters. If one has the common name of a law (e.g.,  The Lanham Act ), a popular name table can provide a quick reference to where the law can be found in the statute compilation. There are also conversion tables that allow one to link a statute to the bill from which it developed and the commentary surrounding its approval.  Shepard's Citations  provides references to when cases and law review articles were cited by another source.

See also: Intro to Basic Legal Citation ; Cornell University Library - Introduction to Legal Research

[Last updated in June of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

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Citing Sources: What are citations and why should I use them?

What is a citation.

Citations are a way of giving credit when certain material in your work came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again-- it provides an important roadmap to your research process. Whenever you use sources such as books, journals or websites in your research, you must give credit to the original author by citing the source. 

Why do researchers cite?

Scholarship is a conversation  and scholars use citations not only to  give credit  to original creators and thinkers, but also to  add strength and authority  to their own work.  By citing their sources, scholars are  placing their work in a specific context  to show where they “fit” within the larger conversation.  Citations are also a great way to  leave a trail  intended to help others who may want to explore the conversation or use the sources in their own work.

In short, citations

(1) give credit

(2) add strength and authority to your work

(3) place your work in a specific context

(4) leave a trail for other scholars

"Good citations should reveal your sources, not conceal them. They should honeslty reflect the research you conducted." (Lipson 4)

Lipson, Charles. "Why Cite?"  Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More . Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006. Print.

What does a citation look like?

Different subject disciplines call for citation information to be written in very specific order, capitalization, and punctuation. There are therefore many different style formats. Three popular citation formats are MLA Style (for humanities articles) and APA or Chicago (for social sciences articles).

MLA style (print journal article):  

Whisenant, Warren A. "How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX." Sex Roles Vol. 49.3 (2003): 179-182.

APA style (print journal article):

Whisenant, W. A. (2003) How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX. Sex Roles , 49 (3), 179-182.

Chicago style (print journal article):

Whisenant, Warren A. "How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX." Sex Roles 49, no. 3 (2003): 179-182.

No matter which style you use, all citations require the same basic information:

• Author or Creator
• Container (e.g., Journal or magazine, website, edited book)
• Date of creation or publication
• Publisher 

You are most likely to have easy access to all of your citation information when you find it in the first place. Take note of this information up front, and it will be much easier to cite it effectively later.

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Legal Research and Writing: Law Report Citations

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• Using the Library
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Citation Structure

• UK Case Law Illustrations showing a breakdown of the components/parts of a UK case law citation.
• JustCite An online legal research platform that helps you find leading authorities and establish the current status of the law.
• LawCite It is an automatically-generated international legal case citator, used to locate judgments and to see how these have been subsequently dealt with and commented upon – perhaps throughout the world.

Understanding Case Citations

Contemporary cases have three main elements in the citation: party names (in italics), the neutral citation, and the report of the judgment. For judgments prior to the introduction of neutral citations, cite party names (in italics), the report of the judgment and the abbreviated name of the court, in brackets. If you quote or paraphrase from a judgment you also need to provide a pinpoint.

Party (or case) names

The names of the parties in a judgment should be in italic or underlined. If there are multiple parties in a case, name only the first claimant and the first defendant, and use only surnames. Abbreviate terms such as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Company (Co).

Neutral citations

A neutral citation identifies a judgment; it is perhaps mostly easily understood as a judgment number, even though it looks like a citation for a law report. The term 'neutral' is used to indicate that it is independent of any published report ('media neutral'). Neutral citations were first issued by the House of Lords, Privy Council, Court of Appeal and Administrative Court in 2001, and by all other divisions of the High Court in 2002. Tribunals and commissions also issue neutral citations.

Neutral citations give the year of judgment in square brackets, the court abbreviation and the judgment number. Neutral citations from the High Court include the division in brackets after the judgment number. Examples of neutral citations follow.

Report Citations

When citing a report of a judgment, cite the 'best report' (as indicated in the hierarchy of law reports table above), giving the year of the volume, the volume number if there is one, the abbreviation of the law report series and the first page of the report. If there is no neutral citation (which will be the case before 2001), also indicate the court in brackets at the end.

Square Brackets [] Vs Round Brackets ()

Square brackets [ ] are used where the series has no consecutive volume numbers and the year is essential for finding the correct volume. So, the report of Donoghue v Stevenson is in the 1932 volume of the Appeal Cases, beginning at page 562, which is written [1932] AC 562. Neutral citations also use square brackets for the year.

Round brackets ( ) are used around the year in a legal citation when the series has consecutive volume numbers and the year is not essential for finding the case. For example, to find the report cited as (1983) 77 Cr App R 76 you don't need the date because the volume number - 77 - indicates where you will find the report.

The Official Law Reports , the All Englands and some other reports series that use the year as a volume number often have more than one volume each year. The volume number follows the year, after the square brackets. Annual volume numbers rarely go above 5.

Square brackets and round brackets are used in the same way in legal journal citations.

Understanding Law Report Citations

How to Look up Legal Citations

Legal Research

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• Last Updated: May 9, 2024 2:51 PM
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AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 Queries

A new study reveals the need for benchmarking and public evaluations of AI tools in law.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly transforming the practice of law. Nearly  three quarters of lawyers plan on using generative AI for their work, from sifting through mountains of case law to drafting contracts to reviewing documents to writing legal memoranda. But are these tools reliable enough for real-world use?

Large language models have a documented tendency to “hallucinate,” or make up false information. In one highly-publicized case, a New York lawyer  faced sanctions for citing ChatGPT-invented fictional cases in a legal brief;  many similar cases have since been reported. And our  previous study of general-purpose chatbots found that they hallucinated between 58% and 82% of the time on legal queries, highlighting the risks of incorporating AI into legal practice. In his  2023 annual report on the judiciary , Chief Justice Roberts took note and warned lawyers of hallucinations. 

Across all areas of industry, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is seen and promoted as the solution for reducing hallucinations in domain-specific contexts. Relying on RAG, leading legal research services have released AI-powered legal research products that they claim  “avoid” hallucinations and guarantee  “hallucination-free” legal citations. RAG systems promise to deliver more accurate and trustworthy legal information by integrating a language model with a database of legal documents. Yet providers have not provided hard evidence for such claims or even precisely defined “hallucination,” making it difficult to assess their real-world reliability.

AI-Driven Legal Research Tools Still Hallucinate

In a new preprint study by  Stanford RegLab and  HAI researchers, we put the claims of two providers, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters (the parent company of Westlaw), to the test. We show that their tools do reduce errors compared to general-purpose AI models like GPT-4. That is a substantial improvement and we document instances where these tools can spot mistaken premises. But even these bespoke legal AI tools still hallucinate an alarming amount of the time: these systems produced incorrect information more than 17% of the time—one in every six queries.

Read the full study, Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools

To conduct our study, we manually constructed a pre-registered dataset of over 200 open-ended legal queries, which we designed to probe various aspects of these systems’ performance.

Broadly, we investigated (1) general research questions (questions about doctrine, case holdings, or the bar exam); (2) jurisdiction or time-specific questions (questions about circuit splits and recent changes in the law); (3) false premise questions (questions that mimic a user having a mistaken understanding of the law); and (4) factual recall questions (questions about simple, objective facts that require no legal interpretation).

Figure 1: Comparison of hallucinated (red) and incomplete (yellow) answers across generative legal research tools.

These systems can hallucinate in one of two ways. First, a response from an AI tool might just be  incorrect —it describes the law incorrectly or makes a factual error. Second, a response might be  misgrounded —the AI tool describes the law correctly, but cites a source which does not in fact support its claims.

Given the critical importance of authoritative sources in legal research and writing, the second type of hallucination may be even more pernicious than the outright invention of legal cases. A citation might be “hallucination-free” in the narrowest sense that the citation  exists , but that is not the only thing that matters. The core promise of legal AI is that it can streamline the time-consuming process of identifying relevant legal sources. If a tool provides sources that  seem authoritative but are in reality irrelevant or contradictory, users could be misled. They may place undue trust in the tool's output, potentially leading to erroneous legal judgments and conclusions.

Figure 2:  Left: Example of a hallucinated response by Thomson Reuters’s Ask Practical Law AI. The system fails to correct the user's mistaken premise—in reality, Justice Ginsburg joined the Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage—and instead provides additional false information about the case. Right: Example of a hallucinated response by LexisNexis’s Lexis+ AI.  Casey and its undue burden standard were overruled by the Supreme Court in  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization , 597 U.S. 215 (2022); the correct answer is rational basis review.

RAG Is Not a Panacea

Figure 3: An overview of the retrieval-augmentation generation (RAG) process. Given a user query (left), the typical process consists of two steps: (1) retrieval (middle), where the query is embedded with natural language processing and a retrieval system takes embeddings and retrieves the relevant documents (e.g., Supreme Court cases); and (2) generation (right), where the retrieved texts are fed to the language model to generate the response to the user query. Any of the subsidiary steps may introduce error and hallucinations into the generated response. (Icons are courtesy of FlatIcon.)

Under the hood, these new legal AI tools use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to produce their results, a method that many tout as a potential solution to the hallucination problem. In theory, RAG allows a system to first  retrieve the relevant source material and then use it to  generate the correct response. In practice, however, we show that even RAG systems are not hallucination-free. 

We identify several challenges that are particularly unique to RAG-based legal AI systems, causing hallucinations. 

First, legal retrieval is hard. As any lawyer knows, finding the appropriate (or best) authority can be no easy task. Unlike other domains, the law is not entirely composed of verifiable  facts —instead, law is built up over time by judges writing  opinions . This makes identifying the set of documents that definitively answer a query difficult, and sometimes hallucinations occur for the simple reason that the system’s retrieval mechanism fails.

Second, even when retrieval occurs, the document that is retrieved can be an inapplicable authority. In the American legal system, rules and precedents differ across jurisdictions and time periods; documents that might be relevant on their face due to semantic similarity to a query may actually be inapposite for idiosyncratic reasons that are unique to the law. Thus, we also observe hallucinations occurring when these RAG systems fail to identify the truly binding authority. This is particularly problematic as areas where the law is in flux is precisely where legal research matters the most. One system, for instance, incorrectly recited the “undue burden” standard for abortion restrictions as good law, which was overturned in  Dobbs (see Figure 2). 

Third, sycophancy—the tendency of AI to agree with the user's incorrect assumptions—also poses unique risks in legal settings. One system, for instance, naively agreed with the question’s premise that Justice Ginsburg dissented in  Obergefell , the case establishing a right to same-sex marriage, and answered that she did so based on her views on international copyright. (Justice Ginsburg did not dissent in  Obergefell and, no, the case had nothing to do with copyright.) Notwithstanding that answer, here there are optimistic results. Our tests showed that both systems generally navigated queries based on false premises effectively. But when these systems do agree with erroneous user assertions, the implications can be severe—particularly for those hoping to use these tools to increase access to justice among  pro se and under-resourced litigants.

Responsible Integration of AI Into Law Requires Transparency

Ultimately, our results highlight the need for rigorous and transparent benchmarking of legal AI tools. Unlike other domains, the use of AI in law remains alarmingly opaque: the tools we study provide no systematic access, publish few details about their models, and report no evaluation results at all.

This opacity makes it exceedingly challenging for lawyers to procure and acquire AI products. The big law firm  Paul Weiss spent nearly a year and a half testing a product, and did not develop “hard metrics” because checking the AI system was so involved that it “makes any efficiency gains difficult to measure.” The absence of rigorous evaluation metrics makes responsible adoption difficult, especially for practitioners that are less resourced than Paul Weiss. 

The lack of transparency also threatens lawyers’ ability to comply with ethical and professional responsibility requirements. The bar associations of  California ,  New York , and  Florida have all recently released guidance on lawyers’ duty of supervision over work products created with AI tools. And as of May 2024,  more than 25 federal judges have issued standing orders instructing attorneys to disclose or monitor the use of AI in their courtrooms.

Without access to evaluations of the specific tools and transparency around their design, lawyers may find it impossible to comply with these responsibilities. Alternatively, given the high rate of hallucinations, lawyers may find themselves having to verify each and every proposition and citation provided by these tools, undercutting the stated efficiency gains that legal AI tools are supposed to provide.

Our study is meant in no way to single out LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. Their products are far from the only legal AI tools that stand in need of transparency—a slew of startups offer similar products and have  made   similar   claims , but they are available on even more restricted bases, making it even more difficult to assess how they function. 

Based on what we know, legal hallucinations have not been solved and the legal profession should turn to public benchmarking and rigorous evaluations of AI tools. 

The authors of this study chose to evaluate “Ask Practical Law AI” because, despite several requests, they were not given access to Thomson Reuters’ other products at the time of the study. The authors look forward to evaluating more tools, but underscore that it should not be incumbent on academic researchers alone to provide transparency and empirical evidence on the reliability of marketed products. 

Paper authors: Varun Magesh is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Faiz Surani is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Matthew Dahl is a joint JD/PhD student in political science at Yale University and graduate student affiliate of Stanford RegLab. Mirac Suzgun is a joint JD/PhD student in computer science at Stanford University and a graduate student fellow at Stanford RegLab. Christopher D. Manning is Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science, and Senior Fellow at HAI. Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow at HAI, Senior Fellow at SIEPR, and Director of the RegLab at Stanford University. 

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