Legal research and writing

Thinking about your research problem and preparing your research plan are important first steps when conducting legal research.

This page helps you analyze your research problem and suggests what your research plan should include.

The first step in planning your research is to analyze your problem. Before heading online, to the bookshelves, or to your coursebooks to research your problem, you should spend some time figuring out what exactly you'll be looking for.

You might find you need to do a bit of background reading to even understand the question. Or you might be familiar enough with the area of law to be able to jump right in and frame your research problem analysis.

Once you've spent some time analyzing your problem, you can plan your research. It is helpful to write out your research plan, referring to the tabs in this Legal Research and Writing research guide for an outline.