Case Law Research Checklist

Pull the matter file and isolate the facts that drive the legal issue — dates of conduct, parties, contract language, statements at issue. Strip out facts that are colorful but legally irrelevant; they will pull your search terms off course.

State each issue as a discrete question ("Does a non-compete signed before the 2024 amendment remain enforceable in Texas?"). Vague issues produce vague memos. Confirm the framing with the supervising attorney before spending billable hours searching.

Capture the controlling jurisdiction so search filters and citators are scoped correctly. Federal-question cases pull from the relevant Circuit; diversity cases require Erie analysis under the forum state's law. Getting this wrong wastes the entire research budget.

Record the brief or memo due date, the hour budget approved by the responsible attorney, and any client cost ceiling for paid database use. Westlaw and Lexis transactional charges blow research budgets fast on flat-fee matters.

Start with the U.S. Code, C.F.R., or state code provisions on point. Read the current text plus historical/credit notes — recent amendments often change the answer. Note effective dates against the conduct dates from the operative facts.

SCOTUS for federal constitutional issues, the relevant Circuit for federal-question issues without SCOTUS resolution, and the state supreme court for state-law issues. Anything else is persuasive only.

Where binding authority is silent or ambiguous, pull district court and intermediate appellate decisions. Note splits — a split between two district judges in the same district is worth flagging in the memo.

Due process, equal protection, First Amendment, dormant Commerce Clause — flag if any are implicated. State constitutions sometimes provide broader rights than the federal counterpart; do not assume identity.

Wright & Miller for federal procedure, Couch on Insurance, Williston on Contracts, Nimmer on Copyright, Chisum on Patents — find the recognized treatise for the practice area and read the on-point section. Treatises are the fastest path to the framing courts use.

American Law Reports annotations collect cases by issue across jurisdictions — useful when you need to argue the majority/minority rule. Restatements are persuasive in most state courts and binding-by-adoption in some.

Law review articles within the last 3-5 years often flag emerging splits, pending cert petitions, and statutory amendments not yet reflected in case law. Useful for novel issues; less useful for settled doctrine.

On Westlaw and Lexis, terms-and-connectors (/s, /p, !, &) is more precise than natural language for legal research. Save the search string in the matter folder so a colleague can reproduce results. Document the database (Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, Fastcase) for billing.

Once you have a strong on-point case, use the West Key Number System (Westlaw) or topic & headnote (Lexis) to find every other case classified to the same issue. This is faster than re-searching and rarely misses controlling authority.

Pull the citing-references list for your two or three lead cases and filter by jurisdiction and treatment. This surfaces both supportive cases and the cases distinguishing the lead — both matter for the memo.

Facts, procedural posture, holding, reasoning, disposition. Brief in your own words — do not copy headnotes, which are editorial summaries and not authority. The brief is what you'll cite from when drafting the memo.

For each element of the rule, list the cases that support and the cases that cut against. The chart exposes weak spots — an element with only persuasive authority needs more searching, not more confidence.

For each element, write a sentence applying the rule to the operative facts. If you can't write that sentence cleanly, the issue isn't ready to memo — go back to platform searches.

Run Shepard's (Lexis) or KeyCite (Westlaw) on every case you intend to cite. A red flag means overruled, reversed, or superseded — do not cite without addressing the treatment. Yellow flags mean negative treatment that may or may not affect your point.

If a lead case has been overruled, reversed, or distinguished in a way that breaks the argument, return to primary-authority and platform searches for replacement cases. Do not paper over it in the memo — the supervising attorney or opposing counsel will catch it.

SCOTUSblog and Bloomberg Law dockets surface pending cert petitions; Circuit dockets surface pending en banc rehearings. A case under review may be reversed before the brief is filed; flag it for the supervising attorney.

Note the date and platform used for citator validation in the research log. Memos relied on months later need to be re-Shepardized; the original validation date tells the next attorney how stale it is.

Use the firm's IRAC or CRAC template. Bluebook citation format unless the supervising attorney specifies otherwise (some state-court practitioners use the state's local citation manual). Attach the rule-synthesis chart and case briefs as appendices.

Route through the firm's DMS (NetDocuments, iManage, Clio Documents) so the memo is versioned and discoverable for future matters. Capture the reviewer's decision and any revision instructions.

Track the reviewer's edits in a redline so additional research is captured separately from style changes. If the reviewer flagged a substantive gap, return to platform searches before resubmitting.

Save the approved memo to the matter folder with the citator validation date in the filename. Tag for the firm's research-memo bank so the work product is reusable on future matters in the same practice area.