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LRAC Legal Research Class Site (Gotschall)

Finding Federal Cases

There are a variety of case finding methods! Case law research is circular because one case leads to another and many of the finding methods lead to the same cases over and over.

  • Looking at statutory annotations
  • Looking at KeyCite/Shepard's Citing References
  • Searching (natural language or terms and connectors)
  • Using Westlaw Key Numbers/Lexis Headnotes
  • Reading secondary sources
  • Reading cases
  • One good case finding method