Lawyers go through a methodical research process to make sure they are covering every aspect of the legal problem they are investigating. As TLU students, you do not need to reach that level of depth, but you can practice some of the steps. Some legal research sources are:
Black's Law Dictionary, Standard Ninth Edition by After you create an account with the State Law Library, you can access their ebooks, which include several legal dictionaires and encyclopedias.
Consult with your professor about which books are appropriate for your purposes. Looking at the book's publisher provides a good clue. Many academic books are published by university presses. Some of the major publishers of legal books and treatists are LexisNexis (part of RELX), West (part of Thomson Reuters), Wolters Kluwer, and Bloomberg Industry Group.
Books on the law can be found in the K section of the Library of Congress Classification.
After you create an account with the State Law Library, you can access their ebooks.
If the TLU library doesn't have the legal book you want, you can place a request through Interlibrary Loan.
When conducting legal research, you will likely come across scholarly articles published in law reviews and scholarly articles in academic journals. It is important to understand the difference between a law review and an academic journal as it relates to peer review. Articles in academic journals that are peer-reviewed undergo a quality assurance mechanism wherein submissions are evaluated by other experts in the research field and are revised according to expert feedback. This process is extensive: most academic journals reject more than 3/4 of article submissions, and the peer review process often takes years to complete.
Law review article submissions are evaluated by law students. While these articles are often high-quality and interesting, they are not peer-reviewed. Check with your professor to see whether it is OK for you to cite law reviews or whether they want you to stick to peer-reviewed sources.
So how can you tell that your source is a law review? Most law reviews will list part of the law school name or the words “law review” in the title. Have questions if your source is a law review or not? Ask a TLU librarian or your professor for help!
United States Statutes at Large
Dr. O'Brochta's students sometimes need to search for case law from the country of India.
The most robust case law search TLU students can access is Fastcase provided by the State Law Library. The boxes below this one discuss the sign-up steps.
Anyone living in Texas can create an account and use certain resources provided by the State Law Library. It is a public law library. Once you have an account, you can access databases like HeinOnline (which includes many legal journals and law reviews) and Fastcase (which includes case law).
Once you have gained access to Fastcase by creating an account with the Texas State Law Library, visit their Fastcase guide for tips and tricks about searching it effectively.
Researchers who need to know whether a case is still "good law" should consult a citator, which is a print or subscription resource tracing the history of case law. TLU does not have access to Westlaw's KeyCite Citator or to Lexis's Shepard's Citation Service. Once you have gained access to Fastcase by creating an account with the Texas State Law Library, you can use a feature called Authority Check, which can help identify cases that have been challenged or overruled. Authority Check is not an official citator, but it can be helpful when an official citator is not easy to access.
Citations to court cases (judicial opinions) are formatted differently than citations to books or articles. The full guidelines for legal citations can be found in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Here are some of the basics of citing cases.
Waco Independent School Dist. v. Gibson, 22 S.W.3d 849 (Tex. 2000).
If you are using a case in your research, you need to both understand the way a case citation is formatted using the Bluebook citation and to understand how to implement that citation in different situations. In most citation styles, legal cases and statutes are not included in a reference list or bibliography. Here are three examples of appropriate citation in American Political Science Association format:
TLU librarians offer in-depth research help.
During library open hours, ask at the main desk for help finding what you need or help setting up an appointment with a librarian.
Click on the Ask a Question tab on the right side of a library web page. It will bring you either to live chat, or to a place where you can leave a message.
830-372-8100 (main desk)
Library directory (list of individual library staff and faculty)
Need an item that our library doesn't own? No worries, you can email the title, author and date of what you need to ill@tlu.edu or fill out a form. We can get most (but not all) articles within 2 days and many books within 4-8 days.
For more information, visit our interlibrary loan page.
