How to Do Legal Research as a Paralegal: Sources, Tools, and Memos

Legal research as a paralegal is a repeatable workflow: get clear on what your attorney actually needs, find the controlling primary authority through the right mix of paid and free tools, verify every source is still good law, and hand back organized results the attorney can act on without redoing your work. The steps below walk through that workflow in the order you’ll use it on a real assignment.

Start By Pinning Down the Assignment

Opening a database before you understand the question is the fastest way to burn hours. A breach-of-contract issue under Texas state law calls for entirely different authorities than the same issue under federal law, and cases from the wrong jurisdiction are worse than useless because they look right.

Before you touch a keyboard, get answers from the supervising attorney on four things:

Scope. Does the attorney want an exhaustive survey, or a quick check on whether a specific argument holds up?
Format. Formal memorandum, email summary, case chart, or annotated copies of key authorities?
Deadline and budget. Time and cost shape strategy. Broad exploratory queries early can burn the budget before you reach analysis that matters.
Known starting points. Attorneys often already have a statute or case in mind. Starting from a known authority and working outward is faster than starting cold.

Budget is not abstract. Some firms use transactional pricing that charges per document accessed; others pay flat-rate subscriptions. Westlaw offers both hourly and per-document billing, and pulling a document outside your subscription plan triggers an additional fee. Know your firm’s arrangement before you begin.

Know What Authority You’re Looking For

Every research question resolves to primary authority: the law itself. That means constitutions, statutes, case opinions, and administrative regulations, all of which bind courts within their jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution, a federal statute in the United States Code, a state supreme court opinion, and a regulation in the Code of Federal Regulations are all primary sources, and your job in almost every assignment is to find the primary authority that controls the client’s situation.

Secondary sources analyze and explain the law without being the law. Legal encyclopedias like American Jurisprudence 2d and Corpus Juris Secundum summarize doctrines across state and federal law. Treatises go deeper on a single subject. Law review articles explore narrow questions in academic detail. None bind a court, but they organize complex topics and point you toward the primary authorities you need, which makes them useful starting points when the area is unfamiliar.

Administrative law works a little differently. Federal agencies publish proposed and final rules in the Federal Register, and finalized rules get codified into the Code of Federal Regulations by subject-matter title. You can trace a C.F.R. section back to the Federal Register entry that created or amended it, and vice versa.¹ Both are available for free on GovInfo.gov, alongside the United States Code and federal court opinions.²

Pick the Right Platform

Paid Databases

Westlaw and LexisNexis remain the dominant platforms. Both carry comprehensive collections of primary and secondary materials, editorial enhancements like headnotes and topic classifications, and built-in citator tools for checking whether authority is still good law.³ Bloomberg Law is a strong third option, particularly for transactional and regulatory work. Which one you use is usually dictated by what your employer pays for.

Free Alternatives

Not every task needs a paid database, and knowing the free options matters when the budget is tight or you need to check something outside your firm’s subscription.

Google Scholar covers U.S. Supreme Court opinions, federal district and appellate opinions, and state appellate and supreme court opinions. You can search by keyword or citation, narrow by jurisdiction, and use the “How Cited” feature to see later cases. Its citator-like feature is not considered as reliable as Shepard’s or KeyCite, so treat it as a starting point, not final verification.⁴
CourtListener is a nonprofit search engine hosting over 8 million opinions across more than 470 jurisdictions, with a searchable PACER archive and alert tools for new matching opinions.⁵
GovInfo.gov is the source for free federal statutory and regulatory materials, including the U.S. Code, C.F.R., Federal Register, and federal court opinions.²
Congress.gov offers full text of public laws from the 82nd Congress forward (1951 to the present), plus bill tracking, legislative history, and links to the U.S. Code Classification Tables maintained by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.⁶

A practical rhythm: use free sources for initial exploration and statutory text, then move to a paid platform when you need editorial tools, citator analysis, or materials the free databases don’t carry.

Search Smart

Legal databases give you two core search methods, and choosing the wrong one wastes time.

Natural language searching uses plain-language questions. Type “can a landlord withhold a security deposit for normal wear and tear” and the system ranks results by relevance. It works well when you’re exploring an unfamiliar area and want to see how courts discuss the issue. The tradeoff: a large pool of results, some of which use your words in a different context.⁷

Terms and connectors (Boolean searching) lets you build structured queries that control how your terms relate. On Westlaw and Lexis the basic connectors work the same way:

AND requires both terms to appear (contract AND breach).
OR accepts either term (attorney OR lawyer).
/s requires terms in the same sentence (liability /s negligence).
/p requires terms in the same paragraph (damages /p punitive).

Terms and connectors produces a tighter set of results and is better when you know your key terms. The catch is that it reads your query literally: search “negligence” and you’ll miss opinions that used “carelessness.” Experienced researchers often start with natural language to identify the right terminology, then switch to terms and connectors to zero in on precise authority.

Using AI Research Tools Without Getting Burned

Both major platforms now embed generative AI. Westlaw’s CoCounsel feature includes what Thomson Reuters calls “Deep Research,” which generates a multistep research plan and delivers answers grounded in Westlaw’s editorial content. It can analyze litigation documents, flag potential hallucinated citations, and embed KeyCite status flags directly into a document you’re reviewing.⁸ Lexis+ with Protégé offers conversational research that walks through its reasoning, document summarization, timeline generation from uploaded files, and drafting assistance tied to Shepard’s verification.⁹

These tools are useful for getting up to speed quickly, summarizing lengthy opinions, and surfacing research threads you might miss. But they hallucinate. They fabricate case names, invent holdings, and generate citations to opinions that don’t exist. The National Center for State Courts puts the principle bluntly: never trust, always verify.¹⁰ Every case name, holding, and citation an AI tool produces must be checked against the primary source before it goes into work product.

Courts have noticed. Several federal judges now require attorneys to disclose whether generative AI was used in preparing a filing and to certify that all AI-generated citations and legal analysis have been verified by a human. These requirements invoke Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which obligates attorneys to certify that legal contentions are warranted by existing law and that factual contentions have evidentiary support. A paralegal who hands over unverified AI output is creating Rule 11 exposure for the supervising attorney. Build a verification checklist: confirm every citation exists, read the actual opinion to confirm the holding matches what the AI described, and run it through a citator before marking it reliable.

Verify Before You Rely

Finding relevant authority is half the job. The other half is confirming it’s still valid. Courts overrule their own precedent, legislatures amend statutes, and agencies revise regulations. Submitting outdated authority to a court is one of the most damaging mistakes a legal team can make.

Citators for Case Law

A citator tracks how every subsequent case, statute, and secondary source has treated a particular opinion. The two leading services are KeyCite on Westlaw and Shepard’s on LexisNexis, and both use color-coded signals for a quick read on status.

On Shepard’s, a red stop sign means strong negative treatment, such as being overruled or reversed. An orange “Q” means validity has been questioned due to intervening circumstances. A yellow triangle signals possible negative treatment, such as being criticized or distinguished.¹¹ KeyCite uses a similar scheme: a red flag warns of reversal or overruling, and a yellow flag indicates some negative history short of reversal.

Don’t stop at the flag color. Click through and read the citing opinions. A case might carry a yellow signal because one narrow point was criticized while the core holding stands. A case with no negative signals might have been legislatively overruled by a statute enacted after the last citing opinion. The signal is the start of analysis, not the end. Shepard’s also distinguishes between “overruled” (expressly rejected), “abrogated” (effectively departed from without saying so), “distinguished” (facts or issue sufficiently different), and “criticized” (disagreed with but not changed), and each calls for a different level of concern.¹²

Updating Statutes

Statutes need verification too, and the process differs from case law. When working with an online code, check the currency note at the top of the section, which tells you the date through which the code has been updated. Most online versions of federal and state codes update within 48 hours of legislative changes, but there’s always a gap between enactment and codification. For federal statutes, the U.S. Code Classification Tables on the Office of the Law Revision Counsel’s website track recent additions and amendments, and Congress.gov provides full text of recently enacted legislation.⁶ Running a statute through KeyCite or Shepard’s can also flag recent changes.

Keep Your Research Organized as You Go

A project that produces great results but lives in a mess of browser tabs and unsaved documents will cost you time when the attorney asks a follow-up three months later. Set the system up before you start.

Create a folder structure organized by client, then by matter, then by document type. For litigation, subfolders for pleadings, motions, correspondence, depositions, and research memoranda keep everything findable. Fewer broad subfolders work better than dozens of narrow ones.

File naming matters more than most people expect. Include the document type, date, and a few keywords so you can locate files without opening them. Something like “MEMO 2026-03-15 research on statute of limitations defense” is scannable at a glance. Inconsistent naming means resorting to searching every file for a phrase you half-remember, which is a terrible way to work under deadline.

On the platforms, use the folder and alert features. Westlaw and Lexis both let you save documents to research folders organized by project. CourtListener lets you set alerts for new opinions matching your search criteria, so you don’t have to re-run the same query weekly.⁵

Write the Memo the Attorney Expects

The standard vehicle for delivering research results is the legal memorandum, and the format is conventional enough that attorneys expect specific sections in a specific order.

Open with the Question Presented, a focused statement of the legal issue tied to the key facts. Follow with a Brief Answer that gives a direct conclusion (yes, no, or probably) and a short explanation. The brief answer should be self-contained: an attorney who reads only that section should understand your bottom-line assessment.

A Facts section lays out the relevant circumstances. Include only facts that matter to the analysis. Then comes the Discussion or Analysis, the heart of the memo. Most attorneys expect IRAC structure: identify the legal Issue, state the governing Rule from statutes and cases, Apply the rule to the client’s facts by drawing analogies and distinctions, and reach a Conclusion on how the issue likely resolves. Keep the order of your rule discussion consistent with the order of your application so the reader can follow without jumping around.

Objectivity matters. Present both favorable and unfavorable authority. An attorney who walks into a hearing expecting to win, only to find opposing counsel has a case you didn’t mention, will not trust your research again. Every legal assertion needs a precise citation to the source document, whether that’s a statute section, a case name and reporter, or a regulatory provision.

Legal citations follow standardized rules. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, now in its 22nd edition as of May 2025, is the dominant citation manual in U.S. legal practice. It separates practitioner citations (used in briefs and memos) from academic citations (used in law review articles). The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is an alternative that produces nearly identical citations with only minor differences. Your firm or supervising attorney will tell you which manual to follow; Bluebook is the default unless told otherwise.

Stay on Your Side of the UPL Line

Legal research is squarely within a paralegal’s role, but the line between research and the unauthorized practice of law is closer than you might think. You can locate and organize authority, summarize holdings, prepare case charts, and draft memoranda. You cannot independently interpret the law for a client, give legal advice about what the research means for their case, or decide legal strategy based on your findings. Those functions belong to the licensed attorney.

The ABA Model Guidelines for the Utilization of Paralegal Services put the framework this way: a lawyer may delegate any task normally performed by the lawyer except those reserved for licensed attorneys by statute, court rule, or professional conduct rules, provided the lawyer maintains responsibility for the work product.¹³ The National Federation of Paralegal Associations defines the unauthorized practice of law to include giving legal advice, setting fees, planning strategy, and making legal decisions.¹⁴

In practice, when a client asks what a case means for their situation, the correct answer is always “let me have the attorney follow up with you on that.” When you draft a research memo, you’re presenting analysis for the attorney’s review, not delivering a legal opinion to the client.

The NFPA Code of Ethics also requires paralegals to remain current on technology developments, including legal research applications and data security, whether working in a traditional office or remotely.¹⁴ That obligation has teeth now that AI tools are embedded in major research platforms. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 512, issued in July 2024, addresses the ethical duties around generative AI use in legal practice, including confidentiality, candor toward the tribunal, and the supervising attorney’s responsibility for AI-generated output. Understanding these boundaries is part of the competence that makes you employable.

1
Library of Congress. Legal Research: A Guide to Administrative Law
2
U.S. Government Publishing Office. GovInfo
3
LexisNexis. Lexis+
4
Library of Congress. Google Scholar – How To Find Free Case Law Online
5
CourtListener. CourtListener
6
Congressional Research Service. From Slip Law to United States Code: A Guide to Federal Statutes
7
New York State Unified Court System. Natural Language vs. Terms and Connectors
8
Thomson Reuters. CoCounsel Legal – AI Legal Assistant
9
LexisNexis. Lexis+ AI: Legal AI for Drafting, Research, and Analysis
10
National Center for State Courts. A Legal Practitioner’s Guide to AI and Hallucinations
11
LexisNexis. Shepard’s Signals and Analysis
12
LexisNexis. Shepard’s Signal Indicators and Analysis Phrases
13
American Bar Association. ABA Model Guidelines for the Utilization of Paralegal Services
14
National Federation of Paralegal Associations. NFPA Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility