Skip to Main Content

Legal Writing & Research

Material for in-class librarian research sessions.

Secondary Sources

September 24, 2024

Learning Objectives

Students will be able...

  1. to use the index to find sections in a resource relevant to a matter.
  2. to use the table of contents to contextualize the sections found in an index.
  3. to extract law relevant to a matter from a footnote to a section of an article in a legal encyclopedia.
  4. to locate secondary sources relevant to a matter by browsing sources on a platform.
  5. to locate a section of a practice guide or treatise relevant to a matter by narrowing results from a keyword search of Lexis or Westlaw.

Jordan is a dog handler who lives in Solana Beach, California. Sydney, a rival handler from Mission Viejo, does not handle losing to Jordan well.

The last four times Sydney was waiting when Jordan arrived at Solana Beach Dog Grooming. Each time Sydney watched Jordan enter before driving away laughing.

Jordan has received 17 phone calls with only the sounds of dogs barking on the other end.

After losing again, Sydney yelled across the course, “I will end this one way or another!” When confronted by the host Sydney said, “It’s not like I was threatening to kill him.”

Your supervisor in the District Attorney's office is considering prosecuting Sydney for criminal stalking, and you are to research whether this conduct would satisfy the credible threat element of that crime.

Research Plan

  1. Preliminary Information
  2. Issue statement
  3. Search Terms
  4. Secondary Sources

To be continued next class…

Two Sample Research Log Entries

Assessments

Using Westlaw

1-Index
2-Table-of-Contents
3-Extract-Law-from-Section
4-keyword-search

Using Lexis

5-Practice Guide or Treatise