Scholarly Research for Law Students

As part of your preemption check, you should identify the materials you might use to write your paper. Take a look at those first. Often, you will start by skimming or quickly reading a large number of items to identify a subset to read more carefully. You can supplement the items you found during your preemption check with some of the resources below.

Use these tips as you continue your research.

1. Research is iterative, meaning you should adjust your strategy as you learn new things from reading your research materials.

2. You don't need to complete all your research before you begin writing. As you write, you will likely identify areas for further research.

3. You can use the materials you have gathered to locate more resources. For example, use citators like Shepard's, KeyCite, and HeinOnline's ScholarCheck to find sources that cite your base source. Similarly, review the footnotes and endnotes in your base source carefully to identify research leads. Law review articles in particular tend to have dense, useful footnotes. 

4. You may need to modify your thesis as you review your research materials and begin writing. In some cases, this may reflect new information, while other times it may be an effort to "rightsize" your topic for the number of pages in your scholarly paper.

5. Keep organized. You can write up a log of sources, place them in folders, or use a citation manager like Zotero.