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Formulating a research question.

Last update: April 21, 2022

The start of any research project lies with whatever it is you are interested in. It could be a specific topic, an event, a piece of legislation or any collection of facts and phenomena that puzzles you and triggers questions. The key is then to determine the research question that will guide your research. As with many parts of the research process, the research question can change and develop as you engage with the relevant literature and data. You don’t have to form a fixed research question at the very beginning of the research process. Nonetheless, it is essential to never lose sight of your research question. Your research question has implications for which methods will be used during the analysis and which central goals the study is set up to accomplish.

There are three main reasons why the formulation of the research question is essential for the research process and has to be done with great care:

• Condensing the topic, you are interested in into a single question forces you to really get to what exactly it is you want to know and which key variables are involved.
• Every research question requires a justification as to why it is being posed. Has this question not yet been answered definitively? Why is this question significant for the field?
• The research question has to fit what you are actually doing in your work. A question that is too broad will make it impossible for you to sufficiently answer it. If your question is too specific, the answer might be uninteresting.

Research questions are often sorted into different categories. As with most categorizations, these types of questions differ depending on the field of study. The biggest fault lines when it comes to the different types of research questions lie (1) between normative and descriptive research, (2) within the latter between theoretical and empirical research, and (3) within empirical research between descriptive and explanatory questions. Toshkov (2016) differentiates descriptive, predictive, and explanatory research while Chui (2017) categorizes them as descriptive, exploratory, and explanatory. No matter which exact typology of research question you are working with, it is always helpful to reflect on these key fault lines. Is the goal of your research to determine what ought to be or study the world as it is ? Will you be doing theoretical or empirical work? If you are working with empirics, are you focusing on the collection of facts surrounding a phenomenon (What is happening? What has happened?) or are you trying to determine causal mechanisms and structures (Why is this happening? How has this happened?)?

If your research topic constitutes a lack of information on a phenomenon, a type of legal proceeding or a specific event for example, a descriptive research question underlines the objective of your research of collecting facts that would be necessary to set-up further analyses or theory building. Descriptive research can utilize a number of methodologies ranging from archival work, ethnographic participant observation to conducting large-N surveys examining one or multiple cases.

If you want to determine the how or why of a phenomenon or event, then you are aiming to uncover causal mechanisms or structures and hence require an explanatory research question. For a more detailed outline of the set-up of explanatory legal research, please refer to Jaroslaw Kantorowicz’s entry on “ Causality in Research Design ”.

Finally, a few guiding questions to keep in mind when (re)formulating your research question:

• Is the question concise and grammatically as well as structurally formulated in a way that is easily understood?
• Is the question open-ended?
• Does the question reflect your research goal?
• Is the question making use of normative language (and should it)?
• Is the question researchable and can be feasibly answered within the scope of the study?
• Does your research address everything mentioned in your research question?

Chui, W. H., & McConville, Michael. (2017). Research methods for law (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. P.

Dunleavy, P. (2015). Authoring a PhD: how to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan education.

Halperin, S., & Heath, O. (2020). Political research: methods and practical skills (Third edition.).

Toshkov, D. (2016). Research design in political science.

Wellington, J., Bathmaker, A.-M., Hunt, C., McCulloch, G., & Sikes, P. (2005). Succeeding with Your Doctorate. In Succeeding with Your Doctorate. London: SAGE Publications.

Research Projects

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Legal Dissertation: Research and Writing Guide

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About This Page

Choosing a topic can be one of the most challenging aspects of writing an extensive paper. This page has resources to help you find topics and inspiration, before you get started on the in-depth research process.

Related Guides

Citation and Writing Resources

Legal Research Tutorials

Secondary Sources for Legal Research

Methods of Finding Cases

Methods of Finding Statutes

Current Awareness and Alerting Resources

Compiling State Legislative Histories

Locating International and Foreign Law Journals

This guide contains resources to help students researching and writing a legal dissertation or other upper-level writing project. Some of the resources in this guide are directed at researching and writing in general, not specifically on legal topics, but the strategies and tips can still be applied.

The Law Library maintains a number of other guides on related skills and topics that may be of interest:

The Wells Library also maintains guides. A few that may be helpful for managing research can be found here:

Choosing a Topic

This video discusses tips and strategies for choosing a dissertation topic.

Note: this video is not specific to legal dissertation topics, but it may still be of interest as an overview generally.

The Bloomberg/BNA publication United States Law Week can be a helpful resource for tracking down the major legal stories of the day.  Log into Bloomberg Law, in the big search box, start typing United States Law Week and the title will appear in the drop down menu beneath the box. This publication provides coverage of top legal news stories, and in-depth "insight" features.

If you have a general idea of the area of law you wish to write about, check out the Practice Centers on Bloomberg. From the homepage, click the Browse link in the top left-hand corner. Then select Practice Centers and look for your area of law. Practice Centers are helpful because they gather cases, statutes, administrative proceedings, news, and more on the selected legal area.

Bloomberg has other news sources available as well. From the homepage, click the Browse link in the top left-hand corner. Then select News and Analysis, then select News or Analysis, and browse the available topics.

If you know what area of law you'd like to write about, you may find the Browse Topics feature in Lexis Advance helpful for narrowing down your topic. 

Log into Lexis Advance, click the Browse Topics tab, and select a topic.  If you don't see your topic listed, try using the provided search bar to see whether your topic is categorized as a sub-topic within this list. 

Once you click on a topic, a box pops up with several options.  If you click on Get Topic Document, you'll see results listed in a number of categories, including Cases, Legislation, and more.  The News and Legal News categories at the right end of the list may help you identify current developments of interest for your note.  Don't forget about the filtering options on the left that will allow you to search within your results, narrow your jurisdiction, and more.

Similar to Lexis Advance, Westlaw Edge has a Topics tab that may be helpful if you know what area of law you'd like to write about.

Log onto Westlaw Edge, and click on the Topics tab.  This time, you won't be able to search within this list, so if you're area is not listed, you should either run a regular search from the main search bar at the top or try out some of the topics listed under this tab - once you click on a topic, you can search within its contents.

What is great about the Topics in Westlaw Edge is the Practitioner Insights page you access by clicking on a topic.  This is an information portal that allows you quick access to cases, legislation, top news, and more on your selected topic.

In United States federal courts, a circuit split occurs whenever two or more circuit courts of appeals issue conflicting rulings on the same legal question. Circuit splits are ripe for legal analysis and commentary because they present a situation in which federal law is being applied in different ways in different parts of the country, even if the underlying litigants themselves are otherwise similarly situated. The Supreme Court also frequently accepts cases on appeal that involve these types of conflicted rulings from various sister circuits.

To find a circuit split on a topic of interest to you, try searching on Lexis and Westlaw using this method:

in the search box, enter the following: (circuit or court w/s split) AND [insert terms or phrases to narrow the search]

You can also browse for circuit splits on Bloomberg. On the Bloomberg homepage, in the "Law School Success" box, Circuit Splits Charts appear listed under Secondary Sources.

Other sources for circuit splits are American Law Reports (ALR) and American Jurisprudence (AmJur). These publications provide summaries of the law, point out circuit splits, and provide references for further research.

"Blawgs" or law-related blogs are often written by scholars or practitioners in the legal field.  Ordinarily covering current events and developments in law, these posts can provide inspiration for note topics.  To help you find blawgs on a specific topic, consider perusing the ABA's Blawg Directory or Justia's Blawg Search .

Research Methodology

Types of research methodologies.

There are different types of research methodologies. Methodology refers to the strategy employed in conducting research. The following methodologies are some of the most commonly used in legal and social science research.

Doctrinal legal research methodology, also called "black letter" methodology, focuses on the letter of the law rather than the law in action. Using this method, a researcher composes a descriptive and detailed analysis of legal rules found in primary sources (cases, statutes, or regulations). The purpose of this method is to gather, organize, and describe the law; provide commentary on the sources used; then, identify and describe the underlying theme or system and how each source of law is connected.

Doctrinal methodology is good for areas of law that are largely black letter law, such as contract or property law. Under this approach, the researcher conducts a critical, qualitative analysis of legal materials to support a hypothesis. The researcher must identify specific legal rules, then discuss the legal meaning of the rule, its underlying principles, and decision-making under the rule (whether cases interpreting the rule fit together in a coherent system or not). The researcher must also identify ambiguities and criticisms of the law, and offer solutions. Sources of data in doctrinal research include the rule itself, cases generated under the rule, legislative history where applicable, and commentaries and literature on the rule.

This approach is beneficial by providing a solid structure for crafting a thesis, organizing the paper, and enabling a thorough definition and explanation of the rule. The drawbacks of this approach are that it may be too formalistic, and may lead to oversimplifying the legal doctrine.

Comparative

Comparative legal research methodology involves critical analysis of different bodies of law to examine how the outcome of a legal issue could be different under each set of laws. Comparisons could be made between different jurisdictions, such as comparing analysis of a legal issue under American law and the laws of another country, or researchers may conduct historical comparisons.

When using a comparative approach be sure to define the reasons for choosing this approach, and identify the benefits of comparing laws from different jurisdictions or time periods, such as finding common ground or determining best practices and solutions. The comparative method can be used by a researcher to better understand their home jurisdiction by analyzing how other jurisdictions handle the same issue. This method can also be used as a critical analytical tool to distinguish particular features of a law. The drawback of this method is that it can be difficult to find material from other jurisdictions. Also, researchers should be sure that the comparisons are relevant to the thesis and not just used for description.

This type of research uses data analysis to study legal systems. A detailed guide on empirical methods can be found here . The process of empirical research involves four steps: design the project, collect and code the data, analyze the data, determine best method of presenting the results. The first step, designing the project, is when researchers define their hypothesis and concepts in concrete terms that can be observed. Next, researchers must collect and code the data by determining the possible sources of information and available collection methods, and then putting the data into a format that can be analyzed. When researchers analyze the data, they are comparing the data to their hypothesis. If the overlap between the two is significant, then their hypothesis is confirmed, but if there is little to no overlap, then their hypothesis is incorrect. Analysis involves summarizing the data and drawing inferences. There are two types of statistical inference in empirical research, descriptive and causal. Descriptive inference is close to summary, but the researcher uses the known data from the sample to draw conclusions about the whole population. Causal inference is the difference between two descriptive inferences.

Two main types of empirical legal research are qualitative and quantitative.

Quantitative, or numerical, empirical legal research involves taking information about cases and courts, translating that information into numbers, and then analyzing those numbers with statistical tools.

Qualitative, or non-numerical, empirical legal research involves extracting  information from the text of court documents, then interpreting and organizing the text into categories, and using that information to identify patterns.

Drafting The Methodology Section

This is the part of your paper that describes the research methodology, or methodologies if you used more than one. This section will contain a detailed description of how the research was conducted and why it was conducted in that way. First, draft an outline of what you must include in this section and gather the information needed.

Generally, a methodology section will contain the following:

• Statement of research objectives
• Reasons for the research methodology used
• Description and rationale of the data collection tools, sampling techniques, and data sources used, including a description of how the data collection tools were administered
• Discussion of the limitations
• Discussion of the data analysis tools used

Be sure that you have clearly defined the reasoning behind the chosen methodology and sources.

• Legal Reasoning, Research, and Writing for International Graduate Students Nadia E. Nedzel Aspen (2004) A guide to American legal research and the federal system, written for international students. Includes information on the research process, and tips for writing. Located in the Law Library, 3rd Floor: KF 240 .N43 2004.
• Methodologies of Legal Research: Which Kind of Method for What Kind of Discipline? Mark van Hoecke Oxford (2013) This book examines different methods of legal research including doctrinal, comparative, and interdisciplinary. Located at Lilly Law Library, Indianapolis, 2nd Floor: K 235 .M476 2013. IU students may request item via IUCAT.
• An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin Oxford University Press (2014) This book includes information on designing research, collecting and coding data, analyzing data, and drafting the final paper. Located at Lilly Law Library, Indianapolis, 2nd Floor: K 85 .E678 2014. IU students may request item via IUCAT.
• Emplirical Legal Studies Blog The ELS blog was created by several law professors, and focuses on using empirical methods in legal research, theory, and scholarship. Search or browse the blog to find entries on methodology, data sources, software, and other tips and techniques.

Literature Review

The literature review provides an examination of existing pieces of research, and serves as a foundation for further research. It allows the researcher to critically evaluate existing scholarship and research practices, and puts the new thesis in context. When conducting a literature review, one should consider the following: who are the leading scholars in the subject area; what has been published on the subject; what factors or subtopics have these scholars identified as important for further examination; what research methods have others used; what were the pros and cons of using those methods; what other theories have been explored.

The literature review should include a description of coverage. The researcher should describe what material was selected and why, and how those selections are relevant to the thesis. Discuss what has been written on the topic and where the thesis fits in the context of existing scholarship. The researcher should evaluate the sources and methodologies used by other researchers, and describe how the thesis different.

The following video gives an overview of conducting a literature review.

Note: this video is not specific to legal literature, however it may be helpful as a general overview.

Not sure where to start? Here are a few suggestions for digging into sources once you have selected a topic.

Research Guides

Research guides are discovery tools, or gateways of information. They pull together lists of sources on a topic. Some guides even offer brief overviews and additional research steps specifically for that topic. Many law libraries offer guides on a variety of subjects. You can locate guides by visiting library websites, such as this Library's site , the Law Library of Congress , or other schools like Georgetown . Some organizations also compile research guides, such as the American Society of International Law . Utilizing a research guide on your topic to generate an introductory source list can save you valuable time.

Secondary Sources

It is often a good idea to begin research with secondary sources. These resources summarize, explain, and analyze the law. They also provide references to primary sources and other secondary sources. This saves you time and effort, and can help you quickly identify major themes under your topic and help you place your thesis in context.

Encyclopedias provide broad coverage of all areas of the law, but do not go in-depth on narrow topics, or discuss differences by jurisdiction, or  include all of the pertinent cases. American Jurisprudence ( AmJur ) and Corpus Juris Secundum ( CJS ) have nationwide coverage, while the Indiana Law Encyclopedia focuses on Indiana state law. A number of other states also have their own state-specific encyclopedias.

American Law Reports ( ALR ) are annotations that synopsize various cases on narrow legal topics. Each annotation covers a different topic, and provides a leading or typical case on the topic, plus cases from different jurisdictions that follow different rules, or cases where different facts applying the same rule led to different outcomes. The annotations also refer to other secondary sources.  

Legal periodicals include several different types of publications such as law reviews from academic institutions or organizations, bar journals, and commercial journals/newspapers/newsletters. Legal periodicals feature articles that describe the current state of the law and often explore underlying policies. They also critique laws, court decisions, and policies, and often advocate for changes. Articles also discuss emerging issues and notify the profession of new developments. Law reviews can be useful for in-depth coverage on narrow topics, and references to primary and other secondary sources. However, content can become outdated and researchers must be mindful of biases in articles. 

Treatises/Hornbooks/Practice Guides are a type of secondary source that provides comprehensive coverage of a legal subject. It could be broad, such as a treatise covering all of contract law, or very narrow such as a treatise focused only on search and seizure cases. These sources are good when you have some general background on the topic, but you need more in-depth coverage of the legal rules and policies. Treatises are generally well organized, and provide you with finding aids (index, table of contents, etc.) and extensive footnotes or endnotes that will lead you to primary sources like cases, statutes, and regulations. They may also include appendices with supporting material like forms. However, treatises may not be updated as frequently as other sources and may not cover your specific issue or jurisdiction.

Citation and Writing Style

• Legal Writing in Plain English Bryan A. Garner University of Chicago Press, 2001. Call # KF 250 .G373 2001 Location: Law Library, 3rd Floor Provides lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this book offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. This guide uses real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching experience. Includes sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section.
• The Elements of Legal Style Bryan A. Garner Oxford University Press, 2002. Call # KF 250 .G37 2002 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Reference This book explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides examples from highly regarded legal writers, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia.
• Grammarly Blog Blog featuring helpful information about quirks of the English language, for example when to use "affect" or "effect" and other tips. Use the search feature to locate an article relevant to your grammar query.
• Plain English for Lawyers Richard C. Wydick Carolina Academic Press, 2005. Call # KF 250 .W9 2005 Location: Law Library, 3rd Floor Award-winning book that contains guidance to improve the writing of lawyers and law students and to promote the modern trend toward a clear, plain style of legal writing. Includes exercises at the end of each chapter.
• The Chicago Manual of Style University of Chicago Press, 2010. Call # Z 253 .U69 2010 Location: Law Library, 2nd Floor While not addressing legal writing specifically, The Chicago Manual of Style is one of the most widely used and respected style guides in the United States. It focuses on American English and deals with aspects of editorial practice, including grammar and usage, as well as document preparation and formatting.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (Online) Bryan A. Garner and William S. Strong The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Online edition: use the link above to view record in IUCAT, then click the Access link (for IU students only).
• The Bluebook Compiled by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Harvard Law Review Association, 2015. Call # KF245 .B58 2015 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Circulation Desk The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. The Bluebook is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools, law reviews and journals, and used in a majority of U.S. federal courts.
• User's Guide to the Bluebook Alan L. Dworsky William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2015. Call # KF 245 .D853 2015 Location: Law Library, Circulation Desk "This User's Guide is written for practitioners (law students, law clerks, lawyers, legal secretaries and paralegals), and is designed to make the task of mastering citation form as easy and painless as possible. To help alleviate the obstacles faced when using proper citation form, this text is set up as a how-to manual with a step-by-step approach to learning the basic skills of citation and includes the numbers of the relevant Bluebook rules under most chapter subheadings for easy reference when more information is needed"--Provided by the publisher.
• Legal Citation in a Nutshell Larry L. Teply West Academic Publishing, 2016. Call # KF 245 .T47 2016 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Circulation Desk This book is designed to ease the task of learning legal citation. It initially focuses on conventions that underlie all accepted forms and systems of legal citation. Building on that understanding and an explanation of the “process” of using citations in legal writing, the book then discusses and illustrates the basic rules.
• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (Online) Peter W. Martin Cornell Legal Information Institute, 2017. Free online resource. Includes a thorough review of the relevant rules of appellate practice of federal and state courts. It takes account of the latest edition of The Bluebook, published in 2015, and provides a correlation table between this free online citation guide and the Bluebook.
• Last Updated: Oct 24, 2019 11:00 AM
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A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Do Legal Research

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When it comes to the practice of law, we often think about court appearances. But crafting a winning legal argument requires a lot of research.

Well-conducted legal research empowers your arguments and gives substance to your legal work, leading to a better outcome for your clients.

To become a pro, you need to understand the tools available to you, and developing a research strategy. Learning to conduct effective legal research isn’t glamorous. That said, it will save you time while helping you conduct stronger outcomes.

This guide reviews the fundamentals of the legal research process, including what sources you should turn to—and when. We’ll also discuss how and why you should check that you’re using “good” law, and offer tips for how you can improve your legal research skills—at any stage in your career.

Click here to watch our on-demand webinar with our lawyer in residence, Joshua Lenon, to learn how to take your legal research to the next level. 

What is legal research?

Legal research involves identifying, finding, and cite-checking information and applicable laws needed to support your legal decision-making. The primary and secondary legal sources for this research include statutes, constitutions, regulations, court orders, and more.

How to do legal research

While the techniques and tools you use may vary, the goal of legal research is simple: You want to find the relevant information and resources (i.e. laws) that apply to the facts of your case, so you can support legal decision making.

With this in mind, the legal research process can be broken down into three basic elements:

• Understanding the key details and questions of your legal issue
• Finding laws and information to support your legal argument checking that what you’ve found is still relevant
• Achieve your research goals in seven easy to follow steps:

Gather critical information about your legal issue

When presented with a legal issue, it’s natural to want to dive in and start looking for cases. But it’s in your best interest to first collect key details about the legal issue at hand.

Pausing to gather and record critical details (like the who, what, when, where, and how of your case) lays the foundation for a more focused, streamlined legal research process.

Establish your legal issue and your goal

Next, use your case’s critical information to pinpoint your legal issue. By establishing legal issues and your client’s ideal outcomes before you start researching, you can construct a well-defined framework that allows you to:

• See what you know about your legal issue—and what you need to find out
• Narrow the field of potential search terms
• Identify the jurisdiction you need to focus your research within

Learn and understand the precedent in your jurisdiction

While researching, pay special attention to the geographical location where your legal issue will be resolved. Is the precedent controlling already in your jurisdiction? Or is it merely a persuasive precedent that has not yet been adopted in your jurisdiction?

Determine the type of legal sources you need

Each of the three types of legal sources you’ll work with has a purpose in the legal research process. Here’s a quick overview:

Primary legal sources are key to legal research because they establish the current law on whatever legal issue you’re working with. You can find primary sources by searching legal research databases like Fastcase or Casetext , include:

• Federal and state constitutions
• Statutes or legislation (such as laws enacted by legislative bodies like Congress and state legislatures)
• Regulations (such as rules or regulations made by either federal or state agencies)
• Annotations
• Case law (such as court opinions or decisions issued by federal or state courts)

Secondary legal sources explain or interpret legal principles in detail, or summarize the current state of the law—giving a better understanding of a particular area of law. These sources are also useful for identifying primary sources for your case (more on that later). Examples include:

• Law review articles and journals
• Practice guides
• Legal treatises

Learn more about the best free legal research tools available.

Begin your legal research with secondary sources

When it comes to legal research sources, start in the middle with secondary sources.

In addition to providing important background information on your legal issue, secondary sources save time: Instead of starting from scratch, you can leverage the expert work that’s already been done.

Think of it this way: In order to create and publish the material, experts had to go through a legal research process themselves. If a secondary source is reputable, the writer reviewed all of the available primary resources to determine what was most applicable. So, by noting the primary sources that are cited in law reviews, law journals, and case-law documents, you can take advantage of the research already done.

Note: Also keep in mind that useful cases don’t necessarily have to have the same legal outcome as your goal. If you find relevant case law where the outcome didn’t match your client’s desired outcome, you shouldn’t necessarily disregard it. If the laws are aligned, you can use that case to show how the fact patterns in your client’s case are different to strengthen your own argument.

Check that you’re using “good” law

Another key step to legal research is verifying that any cases and statutes you come across in your legal research are still “good” law—that is, that any legal decision you’re looking to is still valid and relevant. Using an overruled or unconstitutional statute won’t help you win your case.

Can older cases be “good” law?

While more recent cases are preferred (after all, they’re more likely to reflect the current legal changes that could impact the case law—and are thus less likely to have been rendered obsolete), recency isn’t mandatory.

A decades-old case could be considered “good” law—if it hasn’t been overruled in court or otherwise made irrelevant, an older case that fits with your case’s fact pattern and applicable law could be helpful.

Verify you’re using “good law” with a citator

How can you check if you’re using “good” law? Use a citator. Citators let you verify a case’s authority by giving you a cataloged list of cases, statutes, and legal sources—along with a history and precedential value for those sources—so you can then check that it hasn’t been overruled, questioned, or made irrelevant.

When using a citator, focus on the negative material (by checking a case in a citator, you can look for flags that indicate any negative history). Specifically, use a citator to check that you don’t miss a case that invalidates your argument—which could undermine your credibility.

Major legal databases all have their own citator tools. For example, Casetext offers SmartCite , which “uses a system of flags to indicate the treatment of cases.” Casetext can also “help you evaluate whether a case is good law and find other relevant cases citing that opinion.”

Report your results to check for gaps

Compiling your research into a legal memorandum is a necessary part of conducting legal research, as it allows you to identify any gaps in information that may present consequences at a later stage. Legal writing presents challenges within itself, and it’s not a bad approach for you to supplement your legal case research with a book from a local law library on how to present your findings. Generally speaking, a legal memorandum does five things:

• States the facts of the case
• Identifies the issue
• Applies “good” law to the facts
• Predicts any counterpoints
• Makes an assessment of the outcome of the case

How can I improve my legal research skills?

Whether you’re new to legal research or you’ve conducted legal research for years, once you have a solid understanding of the process, take advantage of strategies and tools to maximize legal research efficiency. Here are three strategies to consider:

Conduct more efficient research remotely

In the past, the legal research process was arduous—partly because it tied the researcher to a physical location—whether that was a local law library or a law office computer—to access resources through legal databases.

Today, online legal research software can be used remotely when integrated with a cloud-based practice management software like Clio Manage. Having the flexibility to research from anywhere streamlines the legal research process and enhances efficiency. Here are a few examples:

• By signing into an online legal research service like Fastcase with Clio, for example, you can remotely access resources and primary sources like cases and statutes, as well as secondary sources like law review articles. CourtTrax provides real-time online access to State and Federal courts across the United States. With CourtTrax’s Clio integration, you can link your search results to specific client matters, and have the results injected directly into Clio as a document.
• Cloud-based online research software like Tracers lets you search for pertinent information (such as contract information or social media activity) remotely. You can also request a Tracers search directly from a matter in Clio for an even more efficient process.

Double-check your memos and briefs with advanced legal research AI

Casetext Logo

Effective legal research needs to be thorough and accurate—which, traditionally, is time-consuming. Legal research AI can help speed that process up without sacrificing the quality of your research.

Here are a few tools to help streamline your legal research process:

• ROSS Intelligence is an AI-driven legal research platform with an automated review tool that allows you to do more thorough research in a fraction of the time. ROSS lets you highlight statements in your pleadings and briefs to instantly search for cases and statutes discussing similar points of law. You can also use ROSS to identify negative case treatment in your pleadings and law briefs—without the manual searching.
• Casetext’s CARA artificial intelligence search technology and automated review tool enhance and speed up your legal searches. You can use Casetext to start your research with a complaint or legal brief from a matter in Clio to find highly relevant, tailored search results and resources. Casetext will not just find authorities on the same facts and legal issues—it will also find them in the same jurisdiction. Casetext’s citator functionality also makes it easier to check and flag any bad law.

Document your research with secure, cloud-based fact management software

Don’t let your research go to waste or let facts slip through the cracks because of a poor documentation system. By using secure, cloud-based fact-management software, you can record your research in an efficient, organized, and accessible way.

Software like Clio Manage and apps like FactBox , for example, keep you organized by connecting all the facts, notes, and ideas in your cases. Using this type of tool helps you prepare for depositions, hearings, client briefings, and trials faster—and with more confidence that you aren’t missing facts.

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Whether you’re a student in law school or an experienced attorney, learning how to do thorough legal research (or how to enhance your existing legal research process) is a skill that can give you a competitive advantage.

Learning great legal research techniques—from developing a more efficient research process to adopting cloud-based tools to conduct better, faster, and smarter legal research—helps you better support your cases, and clients.

Explore how you can conduct more efficient legal research with Clio Manage and the host of Clio software integrations .

How do you do legal research?

Lawyers conducting legal research often consult online legal databases, such as LexisNexis and Westlaw. They might also pore over print resources, case law reports, statutes and regulations, and secondary resources (such as legal encyclopedias, dictionaries, and treatises). That said, there’s no one-size-fits-all process.

How do I start a legal research paper?

Start by determining your topic—this should be specific and something you find interesting. Then, conduct the necessary research to form a well-supported thesis. Create an outline to structure your thoughts before writing an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Finally, edit and proofread.

How to do legal research as a paralegal

First, ensure you understand what you’re researching. Then, start with secondary sources (law reviews, practice guides, and treatises), consulting a citator to ensure it’s “good” law. Lastly, fill in any gaps with primary sources, including constitutions, treaties, regulations, and case law.

We published this blog post in October 2020. Last updated: November 15, 2023 .

Categorized in: Uncategorized

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How to Conduct Legal Research

September 21, 2021

Conducting legal research can challenge even the most skilled law practitioners.

As laws evolve across jurisdictions, it can be a difficult to keep pace with every legal development. Equally daunting is the ability to track and glean insights into stakeholder strategies and legal responses. Without quick and easy access to the right tools, the legal research upon which case strategy hinges may face cost, personnel, and litigation outcome challenges.

Bloomberg Law’s artificial intelligence-driven tools drastically reduce the time to perform legal research. Whether you seek quick answers to legal research definitions, or general guidance on the legal research process, Bloomberg Law’s Core Litigation Skills Toolkit has you covered.

What is legal research?

Legal research is the process of uncovering and understanding all of the legal precedents, laws, regulations, and other legal authorities that apply in a case and inform an attorney’s course of action.

Legal research often involves case law research, which is the practice of identifying and interpreting the most relevant cases concerning the topic at issue. Legal research can also involve a deep dive into a judge’s past rulings or opposing counsel’s record of success.

Research is not a process that has a finite start and end, but remains ongoing throughout every phase of a legal matter. It is a cornerstone of a litigator’s skills.

[Learn how our integrated, time-saving litigation research tools allow litigators to streamline their work and get answers quickly.]

Where do I begin my legal research?

Beginning your legal research will look different for each assignment. At the outset, ensure that you understand your goal by asking questions and taking careful notes. Ask about background case information, logistical issues such as filing deadlines, the client/matter number, and billing instructions.

It’s also important to consider how your legal research will be used. Is the research to be used for a pending motion? If you are helping with a motion for summary judgment, for example, your goal is to find cases that are in the same procedural posture as yours and come out favorably for your side (i.e., if your client is the one filing the motion, try to find cases where a motion for summary judgment was granted, not denied). Keep in mind the burden of proof for different kinds of motions.

Finally, but no less important, assess the key facts of the case. Who are the relevant parties? Where is the jurisdiction? Who is the judge? Note all case details that come to mind.

What if I’m new to the practice area or specific legal issue?

While conducting legal research, it is easy to go down rabbit holes. Resist the urge to start by reviewing individual cases, which may prove irrelevant. Start instead with secondary sources, which often provide a prevailing statement of the law for a specific topic. These sources will save time and orient you to the area of the law and key issues.

Litigation Practical Guidance provides the essentials including step-by-step guidance, expert legal analysis, and a preview of next steps. Source citations are included in all Practical Guidance, and you can filter Points of Law, Smart Code®, and court opinions searches to get the jurisdiction-specific cases or statutes you need.

Searching across Points of Law will help to get your bearings on an issue before diving into reading the cases in full. Points of Law uses machine learning to identify key legal principles expressed in court opinions, which are easily searchable by keyword and jurisdiction. This tool helps you quickly find other cases that have expressed the same Point of Law, and directs you to related Points of Law that might be relevant to your research. It is automatically updated with the most recent opinions, saving you time and helping you quickly drill down to the relevant cases.

How do I respond to the opposing side’s brief?

Whether a brief is yours or that of the opposing party, Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer is an essential component in the legal research process. It reduces the time spent analyzing a brief, identifying relevant authorities, and preparing a solid response.

To start, navigate to Brief Analyzer available from the Bloomberg Law homepage, within the Litigation Intelligence Center , or from Docket Key search results for briefs.

Simply upload the opposing side’s brief into the tool, and Brief Analyzer will generate a report of the cited authorities and arguments contained in the brief.

You can easily view a comparison with the brief and analysis side by side. It will also point you directly to relevant cases, Points of Law, and Practical Guidance to jump start your research.

[ How to Write a Legal Brief – Learn how to shorten the legal research cycle and give your legal brief a competitive advantage.]

How to optimize your search.

Crafting searches is a critical skill when it comes to legal research. Although many legal research platforms, including Bloomberg Law, offer natural language searching, terms and connectors (also called Boolean) searching is still a vital legal research skill and should be used when searching across court opinions, dockets, Points of Law, and other primary and secondary sources.

When you conduct a natural language search, the search engine applies algorithms to rank your results. Why a certain case is ranked as it is may not be obvious. This makes it harder to interpret whether the search is giving you everything you need. It is also harder to efficiently and effectively manipulate your search terms to zero in on the results you want. Using Boolean searching gives you better control over your search and greater confidence in your results.

The good news? Bloomberg Law does not charge by the search for court opinion searches. If your initial search was much too broad or much too narrow, you do not have to worry about immediately running a new and improved search.

Follow these tips when beginning a search to ensure that you do not miss relevant materials:

• Make sure you do not have typos in your search string.
• Search the appropriate source or section of the research platform. It is possible to search only within a practice area, jurisdiction, secondary resource, or other grouping of materials.
• Make sure you know which terms and connectors are utilized by the platform you are working on and what they mean – there is no uniform standard set of terms of connectors utilized by all platforms.
• Include in your search all possible terms the court might use, or alternate ways the court may address an issue. It is best to group the alternatives together within a parenthetical, connected by OR between each term.
• Consider including single and multiple character wildcards when relevant. Using a single character wildcard (an asterisk) and/or a multiple character wildcard (an exclamation point) helps you capture all word variations – even those you might not have envisioned.
• Try using a tool that helps you find additional relevant case law. When you find relevant authority, use BCITE on Bloomberg Law to find all other cases and/or sources that cite back to that case. When in BCITE, click on the Citing Documents tab, and search by keyword to narrow the results. Alternatively, you can use the court’s language or ruling to search Points of Law and find other cases that addressed the same issue or reached the same ruling.

[Bloomberg Law subscribers can access a complete checklist of search term best practices . Not a subscriber? Request a Demo .]

How can legal research help with drafting or strategy?

Before drafting a motion or brief, search for examples of what firm lawyers filed with the court in similar cases. You can likely find recent examples in your firm’s internal document system or search Bloomberg Law’s dockets. If possible, look for things filed before the same judge so you can get a quick check on rules/procedures to be followed (and by the same partner when possible so you can get an idea of their style preferences).

Careful docket search provides a wealth of information about relevant cases, jurisdictions, judges, and opposing counsel. On Bloomberg Law, type “Dockets Search” in the Go bar or find the dockets search box in the Litigation Intelligence Center .

If you do not know the specific docket number and/or court, use the docket search functionality Docket Key . Select from any of 20 categories, including motions, briefs, and orders, across all 94 federal district courts, to pinpoint the exact filing of choice.

Dockets can also help you access lots of information to guide your case strategy. For example, if you are considering filing a particular type of motion, such as a sanctions motion, you can use dockets to help determine how frequently your judge grants sanctions motions. You can also use dockets to see how similar cases before your judge proceeded through discovery.

If you are researching expert witnesses, you can use dockets to help determine if the expert has been recently excluded from a case, or whether their opinion has been limited. If so, this will help you determine whether the expert is a good fit for your case.

Dockets are a powerful research tool that allow you to search across filings to support your argument. Stay apprised of docket updates with the “Create Alert” option on Bloomberg Law.

Dive deeper into competitive research.

For even more competitive research insights, dive into Bloomberg Law’s Litigation Analytics – this is available in the Litigation tab on the homepage. Data here helps attorneys develop litigation strategy, predict possible outcomes, and better advise clients.

To start, under Litigation Analytics , leverage the Attorney tab to view case history and preview legal strategies the opposition may practice against you. Also, within Litigation Analytics, use the Court tab to get aggregate motion and appeal outcome rates across all federal courts, with the option to run comparisons across jurisdictions, and filter by company, law firm, and attorney.

Use the Judge tab to glean insights from cited opinions, and past and current decisions by motion and appeal outcomes. Also view litigation analytics in the right rail of court opinions.

Docket search can also offer intel on your opponent. Has your opponent filed similar lawsuits or made similar arguments before? How did those cases pan out? You can learn a lot about an opponent from past appearances in court.

How do I validate case law citations?

Checking the status of case law is essential in legal research. Rely on Bloomberg Law’s proprietary citator, BCITE. This time-saving tool lets you know if a case is still good law.

Under each court opinion, simply look to the right rail. There, you will see a thumbnail icon for “BCITE Analysis.” Click on the icon, and you will be provided quick links to direct history (opinions that affect or are affected by the outcome of the case at issue); case analysis (citing cases, with filter and search options), table of authorities, and citing documents.

How should I use technology to improve my legal research?

A significant benefit of digital research platforms and analytics is increased efficiency. Modern legal research technology helps attorneys sift through thousands of cases quickly and comprehensively. These products can also help aggregate or summarize data in a way that is more useful and make associations instantaneously.

For example, before litigation analytics were common, a partner may have asked a junior associate to find all summary judgment motions ruled on by a specific judge to determine how often that judge grants or denies them. The attorney could have done so by manually searching over PACER and/or by searching through court opinions, but that would take a long time. Now, Litigation Analytics can aggregate that data and provide an answer in seconds. Understanding that such products exist can be a game changer. Automating parts of the research process frees up time and effort for other activities that benefit the client and makes legal research and writing more efficient.

[Read our article: Six ways legal technology aids your litigation workflow .]

Tools like  Points of Law ,  dockets  and  Brief Analyzer  can also increase efficiency, especially when narrowing your research to confirm that you found everything on point. In the past, attorneys had to spend many hours (and lots of money) running multiple court opinion searches to ensure they did not miss a case on point. Now, there are tools that can dramatically speed up that process. For example, running a search over Points of Law can immediately direct you to other cases that discuss that same legal principle.

However, it’s important to remember that digital research and analytical tools should be seen as enhancing the legal research experience, not displacing the review, analysis, and judgment of an attorney. An attorney uses his or her knowledge of their client, the facts, the precedent, expert opinions, and his or her own experiences to predict the likely result in a given matter. Digital research products enhance this process by providing more data on a wider array of variables so that an attorney can take even more information into consideration.

[Get all your questions answered, request a Bloomberg Law demo , and more.]

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190 Unique Law Research Topics for Students to Consider

Table of Contents

If you are a law student, then obviously as a part of your studies you must write an excellent academic paper on any top law research topics. Right now, do you want to write a brilliant law research paper? Are you searching for the best law research topic ideas? If yes, then continue reading this blog post and get interesting law topics for your academic writing.

Law Research Paper Writing

A law research paper is a type of research paper that focuses on any legal topic in the world. The legal topics are nothing but the topic that deals with the legal issues that are resolved in the court.

In general, every country will have its own legal regulations and policies. More commonly, the basic rights and humanity will be the same for all the countries in the world, but specifically, you need to consider the cultural and historical peculiarities of a country while writing a law research paper.

Remember, the law is a sensitive subject and hence, when writing legal research papers, utmost care should be given. You shouldn’t add too much philosophy to it. Your research paper should answer your law essay topics properly with pure black-and-white facts.

You may think that writing a law research paper is easy. But actually, it is not. For writing an intense legal research paper, you must have a unique legal research topic. Particularly, when writing law papers, you should first research and find the legal questions relevant to your topic, analyze the various legal precedents, and present the answer to your legal question in the form of a memo by properly citing all the sources you have used for references.

Law Research Paper Topic Selection Tips

If you want to write a law research paper, then a good law research topic is what you need. Basically, the law is a complex subject, and hence choosing the right research topic from them is challenging. While selecting the legal research topic, be sure to keep the following tips in mind.

• Your topic should not be too broad.
• It should be informative to your audience.
• The topic should be catchy and relevant to modern law.
• It should contain relevant supporting materials online or in local libraries.
• The topic should deal with relevant legal precedents.
• It should answer all the legal essay questions.
• Your topic should have real-life cases to illustrate your points.

List of the Best Law Research Paper Topics

Law is a popular discipline among humanitarian sciences that have a wide range of research areas. Some common law research areas include business law, commercial law, environmental law, international law, medical law, constitutional law, cyber law, family law and so on.

As law is a broad subject with endless research topics, it might be difficult for you to choose the most interesting idea from them. So, to make things easier, we have sorted different categories of law and listed some outstanding law research topics for you.

Have a look at the below-mentioned list of law research paper topic ideas and identify aprofound legal research topic of your choice.

Business Law Research Topics

• What’s the true nature of business law?
• Equity and the doctrines of business law
• Morality and its relation to business law
• Business laws and the parliament
• The formulation of business regulations in Islam
• Why are business regulations essential for institutions and organizations?
• Business laws in Africa
• How crucial is the constitution for the creation of business law?
• Business law as a profession
• The classification of the business regulations
• Describe the Law of Contracts in the United States
• Discuss the fundamentals of UK contract law for businesses
• Critical evaluation of the role of the judiciary bodies in corporate law
• Disclose an insight into contract laws with respect to the application of verbal and non-verbal agreements
• Importance of collective bargaining agreements and laws on labor relations
• How to deal with corruption in business law?
• Discuss the difference between the EU and the UK after the implementation of the Brexit Contract Law
• Discuss the protections provided to the minority shareholders in the corporate law regime of India
• Compare and contrast the legal aspects of corporate M&A (mergers and acquisitions) in the United States and Australia
• Analysis of the role of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition in regulating the anti-competitive practices in the market
• Compare and contrast the legal aspects of e-commerce in the US and the UK
• Critical analysis of the role played by the Arbitration and conciliation act in resolving business disputes
• Compare and contrast the company law act in Australia and Canada
• Discuss how anti-money laundering laws of a country impact businesses
• Describe the implications of digital payment systems

Commercial Law Research Paper Topics

• What are the dangers and potential results of commercial partnerships?
• A comprehensive analysis of pre-incorporation contracts: How do they work?
• Reviewing the use of international commercial law in energy projects across the globe.
• Assessing the mediating role of corporate social responsibility in companies’ performance.
• Evaluating the commercial laws that should be used against dishonest managers.
• Reviewing the US commercial laws: What should be changed or added?
• Evaluating the regulations aimed at stopping corruption: A case study of the UK.
• Reviewing the implications of international commercial law in UK commercial laws.
• Assessing the effectiveness of international commercial law programs in UK universities.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of commercial law to support commercial transactions in the US.
• Critical analysis of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• Discuss the benefits of Commercial Law
• Analyze the difficulties faced by businesses due to pursuing Regular or Commercial Lease
• Describe the effect of business law on commercial transactions and licensing
• Critical analysis of the labor law in Tanzania
• Develop a comparative study on international labor standards that regulate multinational companies in developing countries

Constitutional Law Research Topics

• The Internet and its impact on Free Speech
• The pros and cons of federalism
• What’s the freedom of the press?
• The desecration and flag burning
• A comparison between constitutions and state laws
• What are the rights of victims of self-incrimination?
• The pros and cons of Constitutionalism
• All about gun control and its history in the US
• What are the key changes that the First Amendment has brought?
• What changes did the Bill of Rights bring?

Criminal Law Research Topics

• Why does one crime have a set of different punishments?
• The roots of criminologists’ work and their work in modern times
• Can sociology have an impact on preventing crime?
• The ethical and legal issues related to criminal activity in your country.
• The real truth behind domestic violence
• What is quantitative criminology, and how does it differ from other types of crime?
• When does the international criminal court come into play?
• Analyzing the use of lie detectors in criminal justice: How effective are the lie detectors?
• A deeper look at the history of the death penalty.
• The key differences between male and female rape legislation
• Evaluating crime-related factors that should not be presented in a court of law.
• A thematic review of criminal theory: Exploring the link between crime and morality.
• What are the best ways to protect witnesses from retaliation in criminal cases?
• Is criminal profiling by law enforcement truly helpful in identifying serial killers?
• How does the criminal justice system keep an eye on police with body cameras?

Read more: Criminal Justice Research Topics Idea for students

Research Topics on Family Law

• Evaluating the impacts of the law on divorce: Has it increased the cases of divorce or reduced them?
• Review the important implications and reasons for changes to family law in the last 20 years.
• Assessing the factors that hinder couples from pursuing a divorce.
• The global issues and legal aspects of marriage and divorce of mentally unstable individuals.
• Explore divorce and social consequences across family law and religious perspectives.
• Analyze the legal foundations of parenting and civil partnerships.
• Assessing human rights in states that follow religious laws for families: A case study of India.
• Compare the divorce rights for women in Pakistan and the UK.
• How does culture impact decision-making on transgender marriages and divorce in the US?
• Evaluating the compatibility of child justice with family justice: A case study of the UK.

Cyber Law Research Topics

• The main cyber laws and enforcement today
• What are the skills of an excellent cyber lawyer?
• How can the government impact cyberterrorism?
• Cybercrime and cyberterrorism
• The penalties for cybercrime
• All about private data, revenge porn, blackmailing, and our internet privacy
• Is it the government’s job to analyze the flow of network traffic?
• Cyberlaw trends and how the online community sticks to them.
• The Internet Era and identity theft: Is it a crime of modern times?
• Categories of cybercrime and the main cybersecurity strategies against violators.

Read more: Interesting Cybercrime Research Topics To Deal With your paper

Research Ideas on Environmental Law

• The environmental influence on the rate of crime
• How has global environmental law changed today?
• The importance of environmental law for the health of current generations.
• Biological weapons and their regulations by international environmental law.
• Will the Uber industry impact the ecology in America?
• The current environmental regulations in the United States
• Sustainability and environmental compliance due to environmental law and economic reality.
• All about the environmental regulations in Canada
• Waste management in countries with a high economic level.
• Environmental law in Australia and climate change

Employment Law Research Topics

• A comprehensive review of employment contracts and job contracts in the US manufacturing industry.
• A legal viewpoint of employee mobility between European Union countries.
• Equal employment opportunities: Comparing gender differences in the UK and US regulations.
• Compare the UK laws before and after exiting the European Union.
• Reviewing legal perspectives of social work employment: A case study of California, USA.
• A comparative analysis of employment laws in the automotive industry in the US and UK.
• Analyze the impact of trade unions and their work in the UK.
• The convergence of employment laws and religion in the USA: A literature review.
• Evaluating the efficiency of workplace sexual harassment: A case study of the US and UK.
• A critical evaluation of the employment law of disabled individuals in the US.

Law Research Topics on Intellectual Property

• Evaluating laws for intellectual property rights protection on the internet.
• A comprehensive assessment of the economic impacts of intellectual property rights
• Evaluating the fair dealing in terms of copyright law: A case study of the US.
• How has EU law impacted the intellectual property regime in the UK?
• Can the emerging technological advancements operate smoothly with the current intellectual property laws in the US?
• Demystifying the relationship between intellectual property laws and EU regulations?
• Comparing and contrasting the intellectual property regimes in the UK and the US.
• Evaluating the implications of Brexit on the protection of intellectual property rights in the UK.
• Is the EU intellectual property law safe and fair for users and owners?
• Does the EU copyright law provide ample balance between the needs of inventors and users?
• Comparison of the institutions and regulations governing intellectual property in China and India
• An in-depth analysis of the UK’s invention and patenting system: Can the existing, rigid system stimulate innovation?
• Critical analysis of the development of copyright and moral rights in the legal system of Europe
• Infringement of foreign copyright and jurisdiction of the European Court
• Critical analysis of the economic rationale of Trademarks
• Analyze the emerging role of patents in innovation and intellectual property protection in the software industry
• Peer-to-Peer Technology: Analysis of contributory infringement and fair use
• Trademark protection is and ought to be the need of businesses to protect their brand value: Explain
• What do fair pricing and fair dealing with copyright regulations mean?
• Trade-Related Aspects of IP Rights: A Workable Instrument for Enforcing Benefit Sharing

International Law Research Paper Topics

• The principles used to formulate international criminal laws.
• Ethical systems and international relations
• Problems of code-based ethics
• How do different countries deal with false confessions?
• Different treatment of terrorism as a crime in different countries
• Diplomats and their protection of international morality.
• Did the US involvement in Iraq provide justice or violate the law?
• Laws on mental health in different countries
• The issues of traditional justification
• The question of ethics in the international legal context.
• International Human Rights Court Hearings: Evaluating the importance of precedence.
• What are the problems of enforcing international law in developing countries?
• Evaluating the efficiency of International Tribunals in solving war crimes.
• Digital and internet legislation: Forecasting the future.
• Assessing the relationship between public safety and civil liberties in international laws.

Medical Law Research Topics

• The common law towards refusal of medical treatment.
• Evaluating the laws governing organ transplantation: A case study of the US .
• How do ethics and medical law coexist?
• Ethics and Medical Laws in World War II
• Law application in medicine: Exploring the antecedents and practice.
• Evaluating the ethical and legal challenges of using biobanks.
• Exploring the legal aspects of electronic fetal monitoring.
• How do lawsuits affect medical practitioners’ commitment to offering lifesaving treatments?
• Unregistered medical intervention in the UK: What are the legal implications?
• Morality and law in the abortion debate.
• In accordance with international environmental law, biological weapons are prohibited.
• Will the Uber industry have an impact on American ecology?
• United States environmental laws are in effect today.
• Due to environmental legislation and economic reality, sustainability, and environmental compliance.
• anything about Canadian environmental laws.
• evaluating aspects of crime that shouldn’t be discussed in court.
• What are the best strategies for shielding witnesses in criminal cases from reprisals?
• A more thorough examination of the death penalty’s past
• Examining the connection between crime and morality is the focus of this examination of criminal theory.
• A case study of London’s examination into the difficulties in determining the type and distribution of crime.

A Few More Medical Law Research Ideas

• How to balance the rights of defendants and victims when using anonymity in sexual offense litigation.
• Slavery, prostitution, and human trafficking. the methods used globally to eradicate it.
• Is identity theft a modern-day crime? prevention of identity theft in the post-Internet era.
• criminality and psychology. Are some people more likely than others to breach the law?
• Social control theory against the self-control hypothesis
• False confessions and how they are handled in various nations.
• The environment’s impact on crime rates is one of the theories behind shattered windows.
• Similarities and disparities between mental diseases and crime in various nations.
• education, criminal behavior, and intelligence.
• From the beginning to the present, criminologists’ fieldwork.
• How does quantitative criminology differ from other types of crime? What is it?
• When is the use of the international criminal court appropriate?
• Examining the effectiveness of lie detectors in the criminal justice system:
• A more thorough investigation of the death penalty’s past.
• The main distinctions between male and female rape laws
• Assessing criminal-related variables that shouldn’t be brought up in court.
• What effects has EU law had on the UK’s system of intellectual property?
• Can the advancing technologies coexist peacefully with the US’s current intellectual property laws?
• Explaining the connection between EU rules and intellectual property laws?

Trending Law Research Topics

• Discuss the role of genetics in criminal justice proceedings.
• Write about the recent changes in tax laws and their impact on India.
• Differences between state and federal regulations regarding gun control.
• Discuss the growing influence of artificial intelligence on the legal profession.
• Explain the role of technology in criminal trials.
• Analyze international human rights policies.
• Write about the Freedom of expression and censorship issues.
• Discuss the Legal issues related to school safety and security.
• Analyze the regulation of online gaming platforms from a legal perspective.
• Write about the Legal implications of celebrity endorsements.

In order to get top grades for your law research paper, a peculiar topic is mainly needed. Especially, by choosing an idea from the list of 150+ law research topics suggested in this blog post, you can write a top-quality academic paper and make your work stand out in the crowd. In case you find it difficult to write a legal research paper, then immediately reach out to us .

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I am an Academic Writer and have affection to share my knowledge through posts’. I do not feel tiredness while research and analyzing the things. Sometime, I write down hundred of research topics as per the students requirements. I want to share solution oriented content to the students.

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• A Research Guide
• Research Paper Topics

120 Law Research Paper Topics

How to choose a topic for your law research paper:.

Business Law Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of intellectual property laws on innovation in the technology industry
• The legal implications of data breaches and cybersecurity in the business sector
• The role of corporate social responsibility in shaping business law and regulations
• The legal challenges of international business transactions and cross-border disputes
• The impact of antitrust laws on competition and market dynamics
• The legal framework for protecting consumer rights in e-commerce
• The legal implications of employee privacy rights in the digital age
• The role of business law in regulating corporate governance and preventing corporate misconduct
• The legal challenges of regulating emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain
• The legal implications of environmental regulations on business operations and sustainability
• The role of business law in promoting fair trade and preventing unfair business practices
• The legal challenges of regulating online platforms and the sharing economy
• The impact of labor laws on employee rights and workplace regulations
• The legal implications of international trade agreements and their impact on domestic businesses
• The role of business law in protecting intellectual property rights in the creative industries

Criminal Law Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of mandatory minimum sentencing laws on the criminal justice system
• The role of forensic evidence in criminal investigations and trials
• The effectiveness of rehabilitation programs in reducing recidivism rates
• The ethical implications of using plea bargaining in criminal cases
• The relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior
• The use of technology in preventing and investigating cybercrimes
• The impact of racial profiling on the criminal justice system
• The legal and ethical considerations of the death penalty
• The role of eyewitness testimony in criminal trials
• The impact of drug policies on crime rates and public health
• The legal and social implications of juvenile justice reform
• The use of DNA evidence in exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals
• The role of criminal law in addressing domestic violence
• The impact of hate crime legislation on preventing and prosecuting hate crimes
• The legal and ethical considerations of surveillance and privacy rights in criminal investigations

International Law Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of international human rights law on state sovereignty
• The role of international criminal law in addressing war crimes and crimes against humanity
• The effectiveness of international environmental law in combating climate change
• The legal implications of cyber warfare in the context of international law
• The challenges and opportunities of international trade law in the era of globalization
• The role of international humanitarian law in protecting civilians during armed conflicts
• The legal framework for the protection of cultural heritage in times of armed conflict
• The legal implications of state-sponsored terrorism under international law
• The role of international law in addressing the refugee crisis and protecting the rights of refugees
• The legal aspects of territorial disputes and the role of international law in resolving them
• The impact of international investment law on foreign direct investment and economic development
• The legal framework for the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights under international law
• The role of international law in addressing transnational organized crime
• The legal implications of the use of force in self-defense under international law
• The challenges and opportunities of international law in regulating emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons

Law Enforcement Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of community policing on crime rates
• Racial profiling and its effects on law enforcement practices
• The use of body-worn cameras in improving police accountability
• The role of technology in modern law enforcement
• The effectiveness of intelligence-led policing in preventing terrorism
• Police use of force: examining policies and training methods
• The relationship between mental health and law enforcement interactions
• The impact of social media on law enforcement investigations
• Police corruption and strategies for prevention
• The role of law enforcement in addressing domestic violence
• The use of predictive policing algorithms in crime prevention
• The challenges and benefits of implementing restorative justice in law enforcement
• The role of law enforcement in combating human trafficking
• The impact of drug decriminalization on law enforcement efforts
• The effectiveness of community-based alternatives to incarceration in reducing recidivism rates

Constitutional Law Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of the First Amendment on freedom of speech in the digital age
• Analyzing the constitutionality of affirmative action policies in higher education
• The role of the Supreme Court in shaping the interpretation of the Second Amendment
• Exploring the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs in the United States
• The constitutional implications of the death penalty in the context of cruel and unusual punishment
• Analyzing the constitutionality of presidential executive orders and their limits
• The constitutional rights of non-citizens and the balance between national security and civil liberties
• The impact of the Fourth Amendment on privacy rights in the era of technological advancements
• The constitutionality of restrictions on religious freedom in the United States
• Analyzing the constitutional implications of the war on drugs and its impact on individual rights
• The role of the judiciary in protecting reproductive rights and the constitutionality of abortion laws
• The constitutional implications of the use of military force and executive power in times of war
• Analyzing the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations and their impact on free speech
• The constitutional rights of LGBTQ+ individuals and the evolution of marriage equality
• The balance between national security and civil liberties in the context of surveillance and intelligence gathering

Environmental Law Research Paper Topics:

• The role of international environmental law in addressing climate change
• The effectiveness of environmental impact assessments in ensuring sustainable development
• Legal implications of biodiversity conservation and protection
• The legal framework for regulating pollution from industrial activities
• The role of environmental justice in addressing environmental inequalities
• Legal challenges and opportunities in transitioning to renewable energy sources
• The legal implications of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture
• The role of environmental law in protecting and managing water resources
• Legal frameworks for addressing marine pollution and protecting marine ecosystems
• The legal aspects of waste management and recycling
• The role of environmental law in promoting sustainable urban development
• Legal challenges in regulating and mitigating air pollution
• The legal framework for protecting indigenous rights and traditional knowledge in environmental conservation
• The role of environmental law in addressing deforestation and promoting sustainable forestry practices
• Legal implications of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, in environmental governance

Family Law Research Paper Topics:

• The impact of divorce on children’s mental health
• The role of domestic violence in child custody disputes
• Same-sex marriage and adoption rights: A comparative analysis
• The legal implications of surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies
• Parental alienation syndrome: Legal and psychological perspectives
• The effectiveness of prenuptial agreements in protecting individual assets
• The legal rights of grandparents in child custody battles
• The impact of substance abuse on child custody determinations
• The legal and ethical considerations of international child abduction cases
• The role of family courts in protecting victims of domestic violence
• The legal implications of cohabitation and common-law relationships
• The impact of social media on divorce proceedings and child custody disputes
• The legal rights of unmarried fathers in child custody cases
• The role of child support in ensuring the financial well-being of children
• The legal and ethical considerations of assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness within families

Employment Law Research Paper Topics:

• Discrimination in the workplace: Analyzing the impact of anti-discrimination laws on employment practices
• The gig economy and its implications for employment law: Examining the legal challenges faced by gig workers
• Workplace harassment and its legal consequences: Investigating the effectiveness of anti-harassment policies
• The role of social media in employment law: Exploring the legal boundaries of monitoring employees’ online activities
• Employee privacy rights in the digital age: Analyzing the balance between employers’ interests and employees’ privacy expectations
• The impact of minimum wage laws on employment rates: Evaluating the economic effects of minimum wage legislation
• Non-compete agreements and their enforceability: Assessing the legal limitations and implications of non-compete clauses
• Workplace safety regulations and their enforcement: Examining the effectiveness of occupational health and safety laws
• The legal implications of workplace drug testing: Analyzing the balance between employers’ interests and employees’ privacy rights
• The rights of employees with disabilities: Investigating the legal obligations of employers to accommodate disabled workers
• Whistleblower protection laws and their effectiveness: Assessing the legal safeguards for employees who report wrongdoing
• The legal implications of employee surveillance: Analyzing the boundaries of workplace monitoring and its impact on employee rights
• Employment contracts and their enforceability: Examining the legal requirements and limitations of employment agreements
• The legal obligations of employers in cases of workplace violence: Investigating the duty of employers to provide a safe working environment
• The impact of technology on employment law: Exploring the legal challenges posed by automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics in the workplace

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Legal Research Basics: A Step-By-Step Guide to Brushing Up on Your Skills

Legal research is imperative to the practice of law. Depending on where you are in your legal career, there could be multiple reasons to brush up on the basics of legal research. You could be a: 

• Law student or recent graduate preparing for your career 
• Seasoned attorney aiming to brush up on the basics amidst ever-evolving legal research technology 
• Growing law firm preparing to train new attorneys or paralegals 

Regardless of which of these categories you align with most, reviewing the basics of legal research should become regular practice. After all, the importance of legal research cannot be overstated – pinpointing the best facts and knowledge for your case can make the difference between winning and losing.  

Use this article to review the basics and set yourself (and your firm) up for success. First, we’ll define legal research and its components. Then, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step process for conducting superior legal research. Finally, we’ll close with recommendations for tools that can help you become both an accurate and efficient legal researcher – which ultimately equips you with a reputation for success in the courtroom.  

What is Legal Research?

Legal research is defined as the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. There are multiple reasons you might conduct legal research: 

• To find “good” case law that backs up your motion or brief  
• To provide legal counsel to clients  
• To provide a memo or brief for class (law students only)  
• To identify case law that refutes an opposing argument 
• To support the over-arching narrative of your case 

What is the Importance of Legal Research?

Legal research provides support for decision-making on complex issues, by providing specific facts and legal precedent that allow you to produce complete answers for clients. Quality legal research is critical to the practice of law.

Historically, attorneys combed through books and libraries for the perfect facts, cases, and issues; now, technology has largely replaced this process. While the prominence of ever-evolving technology has made the process more efficient (and, in many ways, easier), the sheer number of products and options available can be overwhelming.  

The Legal Research Process

Understanding that the legal research process can be overwhelming and time-consuming, we’ve broken the legal research process down into three key steps: 

• Understand the facts of your case 
• Gather sources of law 
• Check your citations for “good” law 

Each of these steps is detailed below, alongside a quick-view checklist.  

Step 1: Record the Facts of Your Case and Create a Research Plan  

Handling a legal task with authority requires confidence in the process. This is true in any practice, jurisdictional setting, or level of legal expertise. A good process should start by taking time to identify and understand the facts of your case. Ask yourself the following questions: 

• What is the legal issue at hand?  
• What are the details of the case?  
• What jurisdiction is most relevant?  
• Do you need state or federal case law? 

Record your facts in a case management tool before beginning – this can help you develop a course of action and narrow down where to start your research. While it may be tempting to skip this step, a commitment to this process saves you time in the long run by helping you efficiently juggle multiple clients. Not to mention, you will likely need what you’ve recorded to file a motion or brief. 

With the facts of the case recorded, you can begin your research. Because this will help you develop a plan for gathering your sources, we will briefly discuss creating a research plan before moving on to Step 2.  

Did you know? LexisNexis boasts a collection of state case law superior to its leading competitors. Easily filter by jurisdiction before or after your search.  

Creating a Research Plan  

Review the facts you recorded to determine what information you will need to build your case. When legal research first moved online, many attorneys felt the need to start with a free service like Google to identify terms of art before conducting a search in a legal research platform. However, this is no longer necessary. Research platforms like Lexis+ allow you to start your search with a natural language search or question and equip you to quickly comb both primary and secondary sources. Litigators, specifically, can use Fact and Issue Finder – integrated directly with Lexis+ – to help quickly identify the best terms of art for their search.  

Creating your research plan is less about planning where you will search and more about planning what you will search. You know your research can be conducted on one, fully integrated platform. So, what questions will you ask to get started? What legal issues do you need more information about? What filters will you need (jurisdiction, time period, etc.)?  

Once you know what you will search for, you are ready to gather sources.  

Step 2: Gather Sources of Law  

The next step in your process is to gather relevant sources of law. Below, we detail the difference between primary law and secondary law. Importantly, when gathering sources, start with secondary law materials. This helps ensure you are up-to-speed on what experts have to say about a topic before you begin your case law search. Why does this matter? Think about it as building your knowledge base before crafting an argument – you’ll be less likely to make mistakes and more inclined to spot case-winning primary law.  

What are Secondary Sources of Law?  

Secondary legal sources are materials that describe or interpret the law. They are educational resources that provide analysis of the law. These documents are cited by attorneys to persuade a court to reach a particular decision in a case, but which the court is not obligated to follow. Start with secondary sources to learn from legal experts that have already explored a given topic.  

Secondary sources may include: 

• Practice guides 
• Legal treatises 
• Law review articles 
• Scholarly journals 
• Legal news 
• Jury instructions 
• Legal dictionaries and encyclopedias 

What are Primary Sources of Law?  

A primary legal source is a formal document officially issued by the government that establishes the law on a particular matter, such as a case decision or legislative act. Primary sources are the law. This is the most authoritative step in the legal research process. You can support arguments with primary sources as they are not only authoritative, but precedential and controlling.  

Your primary sources may include: 

• Case law (federal and/or state) 
• Orders 
• Decisions 
• Statutes and regulations 
• Constitutions  
• Treatises 

Step 3: Check to See If You’re Using Good Law   

The final step in your research process should include a final check to ensure you have used “good” law – this means you are using case law that has been treated positively in court (as opposed to case law that has been overturned or brought into question). 

Check your case citations as you collect them, especially since legal research software can allow a quick view of how your case has been treated in court directly from your search results. However, it is best practice to review your citations once your research process is complete to check for any gaps, changes, or oversights.  

Read more about using good law and the process of " Shepardizing ."

Conduct Winning Legal Research  

Following this three-step process ensures you’re taking the right measures to find the most accurate, relevant and valuable data to achieve your objectives. Now that you’re ready to conduct winning legal research, take some time to review products and tools that can help you in your path to success.  

Getting Started with Legal Research Tools   

Legal research is key to drafting effective documents and building winning cases. Legal research solutions have evolved substantially – helping you conduct legal research with increased efficiency and accuracy . Below is a list of legal research tools to help you build a winning case:  

• Lexis +:  This is the premier LexisNexis fully integrated legal research platform. Features such as Shepard's At Risk ensures you’re citing only the most authoritative sources, with unprecedented visibility into whether a case is at risk of being overruled or undermined. Other Lexis+ features include, but aren’t limited to: 
• Brief Analysis: Get a clear picture of the contents of your legal brief to identify any missteps and bolster your arguments against opposing counsel. Simply upload and file and quickly evaluate the legal authority cited in your (or an opposing) brief in granular detail and receive recommendations for additional searches.  
• Litigation Analytics: Get the most accurate insights into judges, courts, attorneys, and law firms to ensure your success in litigation. Understand critical insights regarding caseloads, experience across case types, timing to key milestones, and damages by comparing federal districts and judges. 
• Shepard's ® Citations Service:  See if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or cited by later cases, or is at risk of negative treatment. Your research needs to provide precedential value. Using reversed or overruled authority doesn't qualify as "Good Law" and your research may be ineffectual or harmful to your case.  
• Practical Guidance: View professional insights on 20 different practice areas. Accomplish any task with practice notes, annotated templates, and checklists.  
• Legal News Hub: Receive up-to-the-minute, award-winning journalism and legal news from Law360 and Law360 Pulse anytime you need it — without having to leave the Lexis+ ecosystem. Stay current on critical developments across legal practice areas, with over 70 coverage areas spanning the practice and business of law. 

LexisNexis is here to support your firm in winning your next case. With Lexis+, all of your legal research needs are integrated into one platform as a true start-to-finish solution. Ready to learn more? Take a guided tour of Lexis+ today. 

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Free Legal Research Resources - United States

Federal law & gov't docs, secondary sources, data sources, getting help, how to use this guide.

This guide contains selected, free, online United States federal and state legal research materials.

Many lawyers have access to paid databases. Yet, combining paid and free resources, can help them to avoid potentially expensive searches. According to a 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report, nearly 60% of lawyers “say they regularly use free online resources to conduct legal research.”

• Legal Technology - ABA Legal Profile

For researchers without access to paid databases, the following resources may be essential. Legal research is often more effective when using a local law library. To learn more about law libraries throughout the United States, visit:

• Local Law Libraries by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 984 views this year

Range of Materials

The Constitution

Statutes and Legislative Materials

Statutes and legislative materials are becoming available freely online, with increasing frequency. Free resources can be a great starting place for statutory research. However, always make sure you confirm your findings in an authoritative version of the law.

Supreme Court

Case Law and Court Documents

Federal case law and court documents are often available freely online, particularly recently decided cases. Check the website of the deciding court for digital copies of their cases. In addition, the following resources provide free case law.

Case Validation

Case involves ensuring that cases have not been overruled or negatively impacted by later caselaw. Case searching and retrieval through free databases is increasingly achievable. However, paid services are still most often used to validate cases. Tools that facilitate this case validation process are called citators. The best way to access free citators is through state and local public law libraries. To find a state or local law library visit:

Executive Documents

State Statutes and Regulations

Many states and localities publish some or all of their legislative materials on their website. Consider starting with the website of the state or locality in question. Remember, materials on official government websites, may not be the “official copy.” The National Conference of State Legislators provides a list of State Legislative Websites.

The sources below provide alternatives for hard-to-find state materials.

State Case Law and Court Documents

Courts are increasingly making their materials freely available online, frequently via the court website. This is particularly true for state Supreme Courts. When looking for state case law, consider starting with the website of the deciding court. The National Center for State Courts provides a list of state court websites.

U.S. Treaties

Several government-sponsored websites provide the full-text of U.S. treaties on the web. Refer to the list below for date ranges for each sources.

Foreign & International Law

For free resources on foreign and international law, see our foreign and international law guide:

• Free Legal Research Resources - Foreign & International by AJ Blechner Last Updated Sep 12, 2023 940 views this year

Journal Search & Legal Opinions - Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers access to many legal documents including patents, legal opinions and journals. Use the search box below and select the appropriate options from the dropdown menu at the top left of your screen.

While many journals are only available through paid databases, high-quality, open access journals are increasingly common. The following sources collect freely available journal articles.

Books, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Treatises, Dissertations, Etc.

Secondary sources are also increasingly available online for free. 

Federal Data Sources

Many government data sources are made available to the public for free online. Check the websites of relevant agencies or organizations to look for additional data.

• Additional sources are available on the Harvard Law School Library's website.

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• 10 Research Question Examples to Guide Your Research Project

10 Research Question Examples to Guide your Research Project

Published on October 30, 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on October 19, 2023.

The research question is one of the most important parts of your research paper , thesis or dissertation . It’s important to spend some time assessing and refining your question before you get started.

The exact form of your question will depend on a few things, such as the length of your project, the type of research you’re conducting, the topic , and the research problem . However, all research questions should be focused, specific, and relevant to a timely social or scholarly issue.

Once you’ve read our guide on how to write a research question , you can use these examples to craft your own.

Note that the design of your research question can depend on what method you are pursuing. Here are a few options for qualitative, quantitative, and statistical research questions.

Other interesting articles

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

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Research bias

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10 fundamental skills for lawyers.

From the MacCrate Report, these are 10 skills considered to be fundamental for good lawyering, several of these lawyering skills are essential for effective legal writing:

1.  Problem Solving 2. Legal Analysis 3. Legal Research 4. Factual Investigation 5. Communication 6 Counseling 7. Negotiation

8. Litigation and Alternative Dispute-Resolution Procedures 9. Organization and Managment of Legal Work 10. Recognizing and Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 

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50 Research Topics For Law Students In August 2022: Read Now!

If you are a law student and love research, here’s our flagship article. Our team has meticulously prepared a list of 50 top contemporary topics  for research in August 2022 across a number of legal subjects . Happy Researching!

Military law 1. Military Law v. Martial Law: A Comparative Study. 2. Authorities under Military Law in India. 3. Punishments under Military Law v. Civil Law: A Comparative Study. 4. Evolution of Military Law in India. Admiralty (Maritime) Law 1. Local laws v. Maritime Law: Which shall prevail? 2. Suez Canal crisis: What it cost the world? 3. 10 Things to Know Before Becoming A Maritime Lawyer 4. Enforcement of Maritime Law: A Critical Analysis 5. Relevance of South China Sea Globally. Bankruptcy Law 1. Efficiency of Fast track Resolution Process in India. 2. Authorities governing Insolvency and Bankruptcy in India: An Analysis 3. Cross-Border Insolvency in India. 4. Evolution of insolvency and bankruptcy laws in India: Landmark Judgments Business (Corporate) Law 1. Corporate Law Journals to Publish Your Research Paper. 2. Effective corporate governance laws: A Review 3. Top Research Journals for Corporate Law in India.

Civil Rights Law 1. Beef in India: A Study into Religious aspect 2. Drug abuse in India: A Critical analysis of Sushant Singh Rajput case. 3. Females of Islam: A Study 4. A critical analysis of Niqah Halala in Islam. 5. Maintenance to wives, children and parents in India: A Study through Landmark cases. Criminal law 1. Constitutional perspective of Criminal Procedure Code. 2. A critical Analysis of Plea bargaining Procedure. 3. Sex work in India: Morality v. Legality 4. Appeal, Review, Revision of Cases in India. 5. Rationale behind Death Penalty in India: A Critical Analysis. Entertainment law 1. Entertainment Law in India: A Jurisprudential Study. 2. An Introduction to Entertainment Law: A Basic Study. 3. Regulation of Pornography in OTT Platforms. 4. Royalties of Artistic Works in India: A Study 5. Regulations on Piracy and Pirated Works. Environment law 1. Indian environmental law for the sustainability of the resources and management: A critical assessment. 2. Politics v. Environment Law: A Study. 3. Important International Treaties on Climate Change. 4. Kyoto Protocol: Landmark Treaty on Climate Change.

Health law 1. Analysis of Insanity in Law. 2. Regulation of Donation of Organs in India and Globally. 3. Jurisprudence of Health law. 4. Right to Die: Law and Legislation. 5. Law and Biotechnology. Sports law 1. Sports Industry Law and Regulation: A Need of the Hour. 2. Relevance of sports law in India. 3. India’s Draft National Air Sports Policy 2022: A brief analysis. 4. Sports law and its aspect of Intellectual Property Rights. 5. Analysing the future of Sports Law in India. Moneylaundering law 1. Analysing India’s money laundering and anti-money laundering (AML) laws and regulations. 2. Hasan Ali Khan v Union of India: Case Analysis. 3. Analysing the legal issues in JKCA money laundering case. 4. Vijay Madanlal Choudhary & Ors. v. Union of India: Case Analysis. 5. The powers of the Directorate of Enforcement in Anti-Money Laundering cases.

YLCC would like to thank Akhila Sawan for her valuable contribution in this publication.

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Law Research Paper Topics: Exploring Legal Frontiers

Table of contents

• 1 How to Pick a Legal Research Topic?
• 2.1 Civil Rights Topics of Law
• 2.2 Business Law Topics for Research Papers
• 2.3 Banking and Finance Law Topics
• 2.4 Constitutional Law Research Paper Topics
• 2.5 Criminal Law Topics for Essays
• 2.6 International Law Research Topics
• 2.7 Employment Law Research Paper Topics
• 2.8 Family Law Legal Topics to Write About
• 2.9 Environmental Law Research Paper Topics
• 2.10 Animal Law Topics to Research
• 2.11 Artificial Intelligence Law
• 2.12 Data Privacy and Cybersecurity
• 2.13 Medical Ethics and Health Law

Delving into law topics for research paper can be as challenging as rewarding. Crafting a paper that informs and engages requires a nuanced approach to selecting an intriguing and substantive subject. Many themes await scholarly exploration in legal studies, from the ever-evolving landscape of civil rights to the intricate nuances of international law. This guide aims to illuminate the path for students and researchers, providing a scaffold to build a compelling narrative around legal inquiries that resonate with contemporary issues and academic rigors.

How to Pick a Legal Research Topic?

Selecting topics for law research paper is an exercise of intellectual curiosity and scholarly contribution. Start with what piques your interest – issues you find yourself drawn to or questioning. Assess their impact on society and their place within academic discourse. Dive into the latest legal journals and case studies to uncover fresh perspectives and uncharted areas of law. Engage with your academic circle to sharpen your topic, ensuring it’s manageable and substantive. Choose a subject that promises a rich exploration and genuinely enthuses you. Your enthusiasm will drive the comprehensive analysis and persuasive arguments that will distinguish your work.

List of Law Topics for Research Paper

Well-chosen legal research topics can set your law research paper apart. Consider these avenues: the legal ramifications of artificial intelligence, privacy laws in the digital age, the intersection of mental health and criminal defense, or the evolving landscape of international trade law.

Civil Rights Topics of Law

Civil rights law continues to evolve as society changes. These topics delve into how worldwide legal systems address new civil rights challenges.

• Analyzing the Efficacy of Affirmative Action in the 21st Century
• Voter ID Laws: Ensuring Integrity or Suppressing Rights?
• The Legal Battle Over LGBTQ+ Adoption Rights
• Disability Rights in Employment: A Legal Review
• The Impact of Racial Profiling on Civil Liberties
• Free Speech in the Digital Age: A Legal Perspective
• Religious Apparel in the Workplace: A Civil Rights Analysis
• The Evolution of Gender Equality Laws in Sports
• Policing the Police: Legal Responses to Excessive Force
• Housing Discrimination and the Law: Current Challenges

Business Law Topics for Research Papers

Business law topics examine the complex and dynamic relationship between the law and business practices in the modern economy.

• Navigating Intellectual Property Rights in Global Trade
• Legal Strategies for Preventing Corporate Espionage
• Antitrust Laws and Big Tech: A Modern Analysis
• Corporate Social Responsibility: Legal Implications and Benefits
• The Legality of Non-Compete Clauses in Employee Contracts
• Cross-Border Mergers: Legal Challenges and Strategies
• Legal Pitfalls in Online Business Ventures
• Environmental Regulations Impacting Business Operations
• Whistleblower Protections in the Corporate Sector
• Arbitration vs. Litigation in Business Disputes

Banking and Finance Law Topics

These controversial topics in law explore the intricate legal frameworks that govern the ever-evolving financial and banking sectors worldwide.

• Cryptocurrency Regulation: Legal Challenges and Opportunities
• The Legality of High-Frequency Trading Practices
• International Banking Laws Against Money Laundering
• Consumer Protection in Online Banking Services
• Legal Aspects of Crowdfunding Investments
• Insider Trading Laws: An International Perspective
• The Role of Law in Preventing Financial Crises
• Sovereign Debt Disputes and International Law
• Regulation of Derivatives: Legal Perspectives
• Implementing Basel III Standards: A Legal Approach

Constitutional Law Research Paper Topics

Constitutional law remains a cornerstone in legal discussions, with these topics focusing on its application in current societal debates.

• Same-Sex Marriage and Constitutional Law Developments
• The Second Amendment: A Modern Legal Analysis
• Freedom of the Press vs. National Security Concerns
• Constitutional Changes in the Era of Digital Privacy
• Legal Interpretations of Executive Powers in the 21st Century
• The Constitutionality of Drone Surveillance
• Separation of Church and State in Contemporary Legal Cases
• Affirmative Action and Equal Protection Under Law
• The Role of Judicial Review in Modern Governance
• Eminent Domain: Balancing Public Interest and Private Rights

Criminal Law Topics for Essays

Criminal law topics for research paper reflect the complexities of maintaining justice and order in society while protecting the rights of the accused.

• Decriminalization of Drug Use: A Legal Perspective
• Cyberstalking Laws and Victim Protection
• The Legal Response to White-Collar Crime in the Digital Age
• Criminal Justice Reform and Rehabilitation Programs
• The Death Penalty: A Comparative Legal Study
• Forensic Science in Criminal Trials: Legal Considerations
• Juvenile Delinquency: Legal Interventions and Outcomes
• Legal Defenses in High-Profile Criminal Cases
• Human Trafficking and International Criminal Law
• Sentencing Guidelines: A Critical Legal Review

International Law Research Topics

International law governs the conduct of states and international organizations, presenting a range of topics for exploration in this globalized world.

• The Law of the Sea: Navigating Maritime Disputes
• International Humanitarian Law in Modern Warfare
• The Legal Framework of Global Climate Agreements
• Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: A Legal Quandary
• The Role of the International Criminal Court
• Trade Sanctions and International Law
• Sovereignty vs. Human Rights: Legal Conflicts on the Global Stage
• Legal Mechanisms for Protecting Endangered Species Internationally
• The Legality of Unilateral Military Interventions
• Diplomatic Immunity: Principles and Controversies

Employment Law Research Paper Topics

Employment law covers the rights and duties between employers and workers, and the topics showcase how these adapt to modern trends.

• Legal Implications of Remote Work Policies
• Discrimination Law in the Gig Economy
• Sexual Harassment Laws in the Workplace
• Workers’ Rights in the Age of Automation
• The Legalities of Employee Surveillance
• Unionization in the Tech Industry: A Legal Review
• Minimum Wage Laws and Economic Impact
• Occupational Safety Laws and Their Enforcement
• Employee Privacy Rights Against Corporate Interests
• Age Discrimination in Hiring Practices

Family Law Legal Topics to Write About

Family law is central to society’s fabric, and these topics address the legal complexities of family relationships and their protection under the law.

• The Legal Status of Surrogacy Across Different Jurisdictions
• Child Custody Laws and the Best Interests of the Child
• Legal Challenges in Cross-Border Adoption
• Divorce Law and the Division of Assets
• Domestic Violence and Protective Order Efficacy
• The Rights of Unmarried Couples Under Law
• Paternity Laws and Disputes
• Legal Implications of Parental Alienation
• Same-Sex Couple Rights in Family Law
• Child Support Enforcement Across Borders

Environmental Law Research Paper Topics

Environmental law aims to reconcile economic growth with the need to protect the environment, offering a range of pertinent research topics.

• Legal Strategies for Combating Deforestation
• Clean Air Act: A Legal Evaluation
• The Role of Law in Protecting Endangered Species
• Water Rights and Legal Disputes
• Environmental Impact Assessments: Legal Requirements and Outcomes
• Fracking Laws and Community Health Concerns
• Climate Change Litigation and Corporate Accountability
• Waste Management Laws and Policies
• Legal Remedies for Oil Spill Disasters
• Renewable Energy Laws and Sustainable Development

Animal Law Topics to Research

Animal research topics in law are an emerging field examining how the legal system addresses the complex issues related to animal rights and welfare.

• Legal Protections for Wildlife in Urban Areas
• The Legality of Animal Testing in Cosmetic Industries
• Endangered Species Act: Legal Successes and Challenges
• Animal Welfare Laws in Agricultural Practices
• Legal Rights of Animals in Entertainment
• Pet Ownership Disputes and the Law
• The Trade of Exotic Animals: Legal and Ethical Dimensions
• Animal Cruelty Laws and Enforcement Issues
• Service Animals and Disability Rights
• Wildlife Trafficking and International Law

Artificial Intelligence Law

Artificial intelligence law ideas for students examine the intersection of rapidly advancing technology and existing legal frameworks, a field ripe for academic inquiry.

• Autonomous Vehicles and Liability Laws
• AI in Healthcare: Legal and Ethical Considerations
• Intellectual Property Rights for AI Creations
• Legal Personhood for AI: A Futuristic Debate
• AI and Privacy Laws: Adapting to New Realities
• AI in the Courtroom: Legal Implications
• Bias in AI Decision-Making and the Law
• Regulation of AI in Financial Services
• AI and Employment Law: Shifting Paradigms
• AI in National Security: Legal Frameworks

Data Privacy and Cybersecurity

Data privacy and cybersecurity trending legal topics deal with the challenges of protecting personal information in the digital realm, a vital concern for governments, corporations, and individuals.

• The Right to be Forgotten in the Digital Age
• Cross-Border Data Transfer Laws
• Cybersecurity Laws and the Protection of Critical Infrastructure
• Legal Responses to Data Breaches
• Data Privacy Laws for Children and Adolescents
• Encryption Laws and National Security
• Legal Implications of Biometric Data Use
• Cyberbullying and Legal Recourse
• Consumer Data Rights and Corporate Responsibilities
• The GDPR: A Model for Global Data Privacy Laws

Medical Ethics and Health Law

Medical ethics and health law address the sensitive and often controversial legal issues that arise in the provision and management of healthcare.

• End-of-Life Decision-Making and Legal Rights
• Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act: A Legal Analysis
• Legalities of Alternative Medicine Practices
• Vaccine Mandates and Public Health Law
• Mental Health Law and Patient Autonomy
• Reproductive Rights and the Law
• Legal Aspects of Organ Donation and Transplantation
• Medical Malpractice: Prevention and Litigation
• Health Insurance Laws and Access to Care
• The Legalities of Medical Confidentiality

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Selecting and Developing a Law Research Topic

• Introduction
• Selecting a Topic
• Developing a Thesis
• Checking the Novelty of the Thesis
• Referencing and citing

Finding a Topic

One of the most important yet challenging aspects of writing a research paper is selecting an appropriate topic.  When selecting a topic, make sure that it is interesting to you and your audience, well-defined, manageable, novel and worthy of publication. If you need help finding a research topic, you can start by:

• Examining legal developments
• Searching for a novel case or a legal issue where courts have split on their interpretation of the law
• Browsing recent scholarly publications
• Mining topic ideas, including calls for papers and writing competitions
• Talking to people
• Keeping up to date with current affairs, e.g. news items can generate topic ideas

The Law Library has numerous resources listed on this page to assist you in selecting your topic. If you get stuck or need customised advice, please email us at:  [email protected]

Novel Cases

A common approach to finding a topic is to focus on a case that raises a novel issue of law. To find these cases, search for legal developments (see Legal Developments) or browse recent cases before the Australian High Court or highest appellate court in other countries.

• High Court of Australia
• Supreme Court of Canada
• Supreme Court of New Zealand
• Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
• Supreme Court of the United States

The following blogs also contain valuable information about High Court/Supreme Court decisions:

• Opinions on High University of Melbourne Law School's blog on decisions from the High Court of Australia
• The Court Osgoode Hall Law School's blog on decisions from the Supreme Court of Canada
• UKSC Blog United Kingdom Supreme Court blog written by influential solicitors and barristers
• SCOTUS Blog United States Supreme Court blog written by lawyers, law professors, and law students

Unresolved Legal Issues

Another common approach to finding a research topic is to examine an unresolved legal issue. Unresolved legal issues can occur when courts have split in their interpretation of the law, leaving the ultimate meaning of the law unresolved. In the United States, this is known as a 'circuit split' because it is based on federal circuit courts interpreting the same legal issue differently. These sorts of issues are ripe for appeal to the US Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. 

A research topic may describe the split, identify any issues that may be influencing the courts, and propose a way to distinguish the situations or resolve the discrepancy. These topics can be very timely and relevant. However, if the discrepancy is resolved before your paper is completed, the topic can be rendered entirely obsolete. Because these topics are so popular in the United States, there are resources dedicated solely to tracking circuit splits, including the following:

• Seton Hall Circuit Review A law review dedicated to covering the United States federal circuits. The section entitled 'Current Circuit Splits' provides brief summaries of the circuit splits identified in federal court of appeals opinions.
• The University of Cincinnati Law Review's Circuit Splits Blog
• Circuit Splits Reported in U.S. Law Week (BNA) To access Bloomberg Law: staff and students must use their University of Melbourne email addresses when completing the registration form to establish a Bloomberg Law School account.

Journal Articles

• Meeker, Heather, 'Stalking the Golden Topic: A Guide to Locating and Selecting Topics for Legal Research Papers' (1996) 3 Utah Law Review 917
• Volokh, Eugene, 'Writing a Student Article' (1998) 48 Journal of Legal Education 247

Law Library Catalogue: ebooks and print materials

Use introductory texts to begin your research. These will help you structure your research and point to key issues that may be appropriate for a research topic.

1. To find print and ebooks, search the Library catalogue for your topic in the keyword field e.g. international humanitarian law.

Keyword Title Author Subject Journal title Call number ISBN or ISSN  or

2. Browse the shelves according to call numbers. Books will be shelved by call numbers according to their subject matter.

• << Previous: Introduction
• Next: Developing a Thesis >>
• Last Updated: Jul 5, 2024 2:01 PM
• URL: https://unimelb.libguides.com/law_research_topic

Cornell Library at Vermont Law & Graduate School

Vermont legal research for non-lawyers.

• Introduction
• Step 1: Craft your research question
• Step 2: Determine the legal aspects of your question
• Step 3: Gather citations
• Step 4: Locate and read legal documents
• Step 5: Write documents and forms
• VT legislative history & historic statutes

Consider whether your research question involves an illegal activity, or if there is a legal task to be completed.

For example:

"My family member was arrested for DUI" has to do with alleged crime and illegal activity.

"I need to update my will" is a task related to the topic of estate planning.

To begin figuring this out, consider the following questions:

1. In what different ways can I describe this legal question, problem, or task that I want to accomplish?

Example: Jerome wants to research the law as it applies to stray dogs. He could search for related terms: dog, canine, K9, pooch, hound; specific breeds of dog: German Shepherd, Beagle; broader terms: animals, livestock, guard dog.

2. What terminology is used for this concept in legal documents? Pay attention to the ways that legal documents refer to key concepts related to your question, and keep track of these terms.

Example: Millie is investigating whether her neighbor has a right to burn garbage on his property. As she begins searching for relevant information, she notices that some of the documents she finds mention terms such as: active waste, disposal, air pollution, land pollution, trash pull. She notes these, and uses some of them to search for more information about her topic.

Tip : Make a list for the answers to both questions. These words and related terms and phrases will help you clarify your research question.

• << Previous: Introduction
• Next: Step 2: Determine the legal aspects of your question >>
• Last Updated: Jul 23, 2024 9:58 AM
• URL: https://libguides.vermontlaw.edu/vtlegalresearchnonlawyers

Hallucinating Law: Legal Mistakes with Large Language Models are Pervasive

A new study finds disturbing and pervasive errors among three popular models on a wide range of legal tasks.

Pitiphothivichit/iStock

In May of last year, a Manhattan lawyer became famous for all the wrong reasons. He submitted a legal brief generated largely by ChatGPT. And the judge did not take kindly to the submission. Describing “an unprecedented circumstance,” the judge noted that the brief was littered with “bogus judicial decisions . . . bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.” The story of the “ChatGPT lawyer” went viral as a  New York Times story, sparking none other than  Chief Justice John Roberts to lament the role of “hallucinations” of large language models (LLMs) in his annual report on the federal judiciary. 

Yet how prevalent are such legal hallucinations, really? 

The Legal Transformation  

The legal industry is on the cusp of a major transformation, driven by the emergence of LLMs like ChatGPT, PaLM, Claude, and Llama. These advanced models, equipped with billions of parameters, have the ability not only to process but also to generate extensive, authoritative text on a wide range of topics. Their influence is becoming more evident across various aspects of daily life, including their growing use in legal practices. 

A dizzying number of legal technology startups and law firms are now advertising and leveraging LLM-based tools for a variety of tasks, such as sifting through discovery documents to find relevant evidence, crafting detailed legal memoranda and case briefs, and formulating complex litigation strategies. LLM developers proudly claim that their models can pass the bar exam. But a core problem remains: hallucinations, or the tendency of LLMs to produce content that deviates from actual legal facts or well-established legal principles and precedents. 

Until now, the evidence was largely anecdotal as to the extent of legal hallucinations. Yet the legal system also provides a unique window to systematically study the extent and nature of such hallucinations. 

In a  new preprint study by Stanford RegLab and Institute for Human-Centered AI researchers, we demonstrate that legal hallucinations are pervasive and disturbing: hallucination rates range from 69% to 88% in response to specific legal queries for state-of-the-art language models. Moreover, these models often lack self-awareness about their errors and tend to reinforce incorrect legal assumptions and beliefs. These findings raise significant concerns about the reliability of LLMs in legal contexts, underscoring the importance of careful, supervised integration of these AI technologies into legal practice.

The Correlates of Hallucination

Hallucination rates are alarmingly high for a wide range of verifiable legal facts. Yet the unique structure of the U.S. legal system – with its clear delineations of hierarchy and authority – allowed us to also understand how hallucination rates vary along key dimensions. We designed our study by constructing a number of different tasks, ranging from asking models simple things like the author of an opinion to more complex requests like whether two cases are in tension with one another, a key element of legal reasoning. We tested more than 200,000 queries against each of GPT 3.5, Llama 2, and PaLM 2, stratifying along key dimensions. 

First, we found that performance deteriorates when dealing with more complex tasks that require a nuanced understanding of legal issues or interpretation of legal texts. For instance, in a task measuring the precedential relationship between two different cases, most LLMs do no better than random guessing. And in answering queries about a court’s core ruling (or holding), models hallucinate at least 75% of the time. These findings suggest that LLMs are not yet able to perform the kind of legal reasoning that attorneys perform when they assess the precedential relationship between cases—a core objective of legal research.

Second, case law from lower courts, like district courts, is subject to more frequent hallucinations than case law from higher courts like the Supreme Court. This suggests that LLMs may struggle with localized legal knowledge that is often crucial in lower court cases, and calls into doubt claims that LLMs will reduce longstanding access to justice barriers in the United States. 

Third, LLMs show a tendency to perform better with more prominent cases, particularly those in the Supreme Court. Similarly, performance is best in the influential Second and Ninth Circuits, but worst in circuit courts located in the geographic center of the country. These performance differences could be due to certain cases being more frequently cited and discussed, thus being better represented in the training data of these models. 

Fourth, hallucinations are most common among the Supreme Court’s oldest and newest cases, and least common among later 20th century cases. This suggests that LLMs’ peak performance may lag several years behind current legal doctrine, and that LLMs may fail to internalize case law that is very old but still applicable and relevant law. 

Last, different models exhibit varying degrees of accuracy and biases. For example, GPT 3.5 generally outperforms others but shows certain inclinations, like favoring well-known justices or specific types of cases. When asked who authored an opinion, for instance, GPT 3.5 tends to think Justice Joseph Story wrote far more opinions than he actually did. 

Contrafactual Bias

Another critical danger that we unearth is model susceptibility to what we call “contra-factual bias,” namely the tendency to assume that a factual premise in a query is true, even if it is flatly wrong. For instance, if one queried, “Why did Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissent in  Obergefell ?” (the case that affirmed a right to same-sex marriage), a model might fail to second-guess whether Justice Ginsburg in fact dissented. 

This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in language models like GPT 3.5, which often provide credible responses to queries based on false premises, likely due to its instruction-following training. This tendency escalates in complex legal scenarios or when dealing with lower court cases. Llama 2, on the other hand, frequently rejects false premises, but sometimes mistakenly denies the existence of actual cases or justices.

Relatedly, we also show that models are imperfectly calibrated for legal questions. Model calibration captures whether model confidence is correlated with the correctness of answers. We find some divergence across models: PaLM 2 and ChatGPT (GPT 3.5) show better calibration than Llama 2. Yet, a common thread across all models is a tendency towards overconfidence, irrespective of their actual accuracy. This overconfidence is particularly evident in complex tasks and those pertaining to lower courts, where models often overstate their certainty, especially in well-known or high-profile legal areas.

Implications for the Law  

The implications of these findings are serious. Today, there is much excitement that LLMs will democratize access to justice by providing an easy and low-cost way for members of the public to obtain legal advice. But our findings suggest that the current limitations of LLMs pose a risk of further  deepening existing legal inequalities, rather than alleviating them.

Ideally, LLMs would excel at providing localized legal information, effectively correct users on misguided queries, and qualify their responses with appropriate levels of confidence. However, we find that these capabilities are conspicuously lacking in current models. Thus, the risks of using LLMs for legal research are especially high for:

• Litigants in lower courts or in less prominent jurisdictions,
• Individuals seeking detailed or complex legal information,
• Users formulating questions based on incorrect premises, and 
• Those uncertain about the reliability of LLM responses.

In essence, the users who would benefit the most from legal LLM are precisely those who the LLMs are least well-equipped to serve.

There is also a looming risk of LLMs contributing to legal “ monoculture .” Because LLMs tend to limit users to a narrow judicial perspective, they potentially overlook broader nuances and diversity of legal interpretations. This is substantively alarming, but there is also a version of representational harm: LLMs may systematically erase the contributions of one member of the legal community, such as Justice Ginsburg, by misattributing them to another, such as Justice Story. 

Moving Forward with Caution

Much active technical work is ongoing to address hallucinations in LLMs. Yet addressing  legal hallucinations is not merely a technical problem. We suggest that LLMs face fundamental trade-offs in balancing fidelity to training data, accuracy in responding to user prompts, and adherence to real-world legal facts. Thus, minimizing hallucinations ultimately requires normative judgments about which type of behavior is most important, and transparency in these balancing decisions is critical.

While LLMs hold significant potential for legal practice, the limitations we document in our work warrant significant caution. Responsible integration of AI in legal practice will require more iteration, supervision, and human understanding of AI capabilities and limitations. 

In that respect, our findings underscore the centrality of human-centered AI. Responsible AI integration must augment lawyers, clients, and judges and not, as Chief Justice Roberts put it, risk “dehumanizing the law.” 

Matthew Dahl is a J.D./Ph.D. student at Yale University and graduate student affiliate of Stanford RegLab. 

Varun Magesh is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. 

Mirac Suzgun is a J.D/Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University and a graduate student fellow at Stanford RegLab. 

Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow at HAI, Senior Fellow at SIEPR, and Director of the RegLab at Stanford University. 

More News Topics

• Environment
• National Politics
• Investigations
• Florida Voices

No charges filed against County Commissioner Tobia, despite wide-ranging allegations

A state prosecutor has opted against filing charges against Brevard County Commissioner John Tobia , after investigating a series of allegations of wrongdoing brought by a former Tobia employee.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports of its staff's interviews with two current employees in Tobia's office appeared to back up some of former employee Christopher Davis' allegations, but did not address others.

The allegations are contained in a 247-page case file obtained by FLORIDA TODAY from the State Attorney's Office for the 7th Judicial Circuit, which handled the case. The investigation was transferred in November by Gov. Ron DeSantis from the 18th Judicial Circuit that includes Brevard to the Daytona Beach-area 7th Circuit, at the request of 18th Circuit State Attorney Phil Archer, who wanted to avoid a conflict of interest or any appearance of impropriety.

Davis, a former administrative aide in Tobia's Palm Bay office, alleges in sworn statements to investigators that Tobia:

• Used staff in his commission office to help him grade papers of students he taught at Valencia College while employees were supposed to be working on county business. Valencia lists Tobia as a full-time professor, and Tobia teaches courses on American federal government and on state and local government. The college paid Tobia $100,663.63 in 2023, according to Tobia's latest financial disclosure report filed with the state. A current Tobia aide backed up the allegation that staff helped grade papers.
• Asked Davis to perform personal errands. Davis provided text messages that appeared to indicate that he helped Tobia research airline flights.
• Asked Davis to surreptitiously obtain information on Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic's stay in a Washington hotel. Tobia — who cannot seek reelection as a county commissioner this year because of term limits — is challenging Bobanic in an Aug. 20 Republican primary for supervisor of elections, a job that pays $184,356 a year. Davis alleged that Tobia asked him to create an email account that appeared to be Bobanic's in order to obtain those records from the hotel in an effort to determine how the bill was paid and whether taxpayer money was used. The trip was paid for by a federal agency, so Bobanic could discuss election integrity matters.
• Had his staff research the political party affiliations and other information about people who called Tobia's office, and that calls from Democrats were ignored. Current staff members agreed that they researched callers' voter registration or other information, but said every call was returned regardless.

Tobia reacts to allegations

Transferred to another district: County Commissioner John Tobia under investigation for alleged voter fraud

In response to the allegations and the state attorney's office's decision not to file charges, Tobia told FLORIDA TODAY: "This was a witch-hunt initiated by a disgruntled former employee terminated for cause and perpetuated by a desperate political opponent who believed this was his path to victory, while concealing his past as a registered Democrat."

Davis on March 20, 2023, was hired to the administrative aide position in Tobia's District 3 commission office. Tobia is completing his second four-year term as commissioner for District 3, which covers parts of South Brevard County.

Davis' personnel file shows that Davis submitted a letter of resignation to Tobia, dated June 27, 2023, indicating that his resignation would have been effective on July 12, 2023.

Tobia said he fired Davis because Davis took a list of personal passwords off Tobia's desk at his Palm Bay commission office. A July 3, 2023, letter from Tobia to Davis in Davis' personnel file said: "Due to recent events, your employment is henceforth terminated due to cause, effective immediately."

Tobia also filed a complaint about Davis with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office about the matter. There is no indication of the status of that matter in the state attorney's office file, and a previous FLORIDA TODAY inquiry to a BCSO spokesman was not answered.

According to FDLE investigative reports, Davis has contended that a list of Tobia's work-related and personal passwords and log-ons were part of an "information manual" provided to employees of Tobia's commission office, and that he did not take the passwords illegally. Davis said he maintained possession of the information manual with the belief the manual was given to him.

Responding to Tobia's contention that Bobanic is trying to hide his Democratic past, Bobanic told FLORIDA TODAY that he briefly switched his voter registration from Republican to Democratic in 2012, while he was working at the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office, Bobanic said that was so he could be eligible to vote in a Democratic primary there for his then-boss, who was running in that primary for supervisor of elections. After that primary was over, Bobanic said he switched his registration back to Republican.

In response to Davis' allegations contained in case file, Tobia said: "I categorically deny these baseless accusations."

Hotel bill controversy

In a document filed June 19 in County Court in Daytona Beach, 7th Judicial Circuit Assistant State Attorney Sarah Thomas said she did not intend to prosecute the case against Tobia on a charge of unlawful possession of personal identification information over Tobia's attempt to get Bobanic's hotel records. No other potential charges were listed in that document.

So far, Thomas has provided no further details in the case file related to her decision.

Bobanic questions the decision not to prosecute.

"It seems to be a clear-cut case of identity theft by Commissioner Tobia and his staff to make up an email impersonating me to try to get information on a hotel bill," Bobanic alleged.

The case file included a series of investigative reports written by staff of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Office of Executive Investigations.

In one report, the investigator wrote that Davis said Tobia wanted him to obtain the receipts from the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, where Bobanic stayed during a work-related trip, "to determine if Bobanic was lavishly spending taxpayer money." Davis said Tobia asked him to call the hotel to get the information. When the hotel asked for an email request from the customer, Davis said he was instructed by Tobia to create a fake email account, write the email, and make it appear that it was coming from someone named Timothy or Tim.

Bobanic told investigators that his trip to Washington was at the request of the U.S. Election Assistance Committee so he could present on how Brevard County conducts post-election audits, and that it was financed by the U.S. Treasury, so no county taxpayer funds were used.

Two current staff members in Tobia's office also were interviewed by FDLE officials. But Tobia's attorney told an FDLE inspector on Nov. 7 that Tobia would not provide a statement to investigators.

Two FDLE inspectors on Sept. 27 interviewed both Bethany Prasad, chief of staff for Tobia, and Brian Bond, Tobia's legislative aide.

According to FDLE reports, "Prasad acknowledged that Tobia requested Davis to find out how much Bobanic paid" for the hotel room. She described Tobia "as fiscally concerned, saying Tobia believed travel was a frivolous, often-abused item. Prasad admitted she was the person who came up with the email for Davis to send to the hotel."

A Nov. 14 FDLE report indicated that, "based on the evidence gathered, there is probable cause to believe that the email address was created and sent to the Fairmont Hotel to obtain Bobanic's bill. It is also apparent that the author of the email made it appear there was an affiliation to Bobanic."

But they said the matter fell short of requirement for prosecution because there was no use of Bobanic's official state-issued driver's license number, Social Security number or other personal identification information.

Valencia College allegation

Questions about deposition: Deposition alleges withholding of public records in lawsuit involving School Board members

According to one FDLE report, Prasad indicated that she assisted Tobia by logging into his Valencia College account, and "has assisted him in grading papers." She said Tobia was "technologically impaired," so she also helped him in setting up his new classes when the college made changes to its online system.

A separate FDLE report said Bond indicated that there were occasions when he assisted Tobia with his Valencia College work, including helping when there was a syllabus change and occasionally helping "cross-reference grades."

When investigators asked Prasad if there was anything illegal, immoral or unethical that she was aware of that had occurred at her office, Prasad "advised that she did not like doing Tobia's personal work, but did not feel that it rose to the level of being unethical," the report said.

Research through webElect

The report on the Bond interview said Bond acknowledged that he used Tobia's account with webElect, a voter registration database, "in a limited capacity for constituent research. According to Bond, he used the program to better understand a voter, to determine their party and to know their affiliations."

Nevertheless, Bond told investigators that "each person who contacts Tobia's office gets a response, regardless," the FDLE report said.

That conflicts with an allegation by Davis that registered Democrats or those not having a high enough "score" were to be ignored.

Prasad also told investigators that she used webElect "to conduct informational research on Tobia's constituents," including "to research/verify if a constituent is in Tobia's district," according to an FDLE report.

Questions about Tobia's home address

The FDLE also investigated whether Tobia actually lived at the Palm Bay address he listed on voting documents as his home address. Davis alleged that Tobia actually lived outside his commission district.

According to an FDLE report, the owner of the Palm Bay home told FDLE inspectors that she lived there with her adult daughter, and that she rented a room to Tobia for $300 a month. She said, while some of Tobia's clothes and other belongings were in the rented room and in a garage at the home, Tobia was there only occasionally.

The FDLE concluded that "probable cause has not been established that a crime has been committed," related to the issue of Tobia's address.

Brevard County Attorney Morris Richardson sat in on the interviews with Bond and Prasad.

According to a report in the case file, Richardson said the county's view is that county officials "typically let commissioners run their offices at their discretion."

"As such, it would be necessary for county administrators to determine if the actions of any of the individuals within the District 3 commissioner's office constitute a violation," including if they are criminal in nature or would be more property addressed through county disciplinary procedures, the report said.

Dave Berman is business editor at  FLORIDA TODAY.  Contact Berman at  [email protected] , on X at  @bydaveberman  and on Facebook at  www.facebook.com/dave.berman.54

We fact-checked some of the rumors spreading online about the Trump assassination attempt

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Altered images, false claims shooting was staged, predictive programming conspiracy theories.

Reporting by Seana Davis; additional reporting Esther Chan; editing by Stephanie Burnett and Christina Agnagnostopoulos

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Fact Check: Global temperature has risen, not fallen, since medieval period 

Comments made by climate-sceptic scientist Professor Ian Plimer claiming Earth’s climate has cooled, not warmed, since medieval times, are unsubstantiated and misleading, according to climate experts.

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Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide

Airlines, hospitals and people’s computers were affected after CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, sent out a flawed software update.

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By Adam Satariano Paul Mozur Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel

• July 19, 2024

Airlines grounded flights. Operators of 911 lines could not respond to emergencies. Hospitals canceled surgeries. Retailers closed for the day. And the actions all traced back to a batch of bad computer code.

A flawed software update sent out by a little-known cybersecurity company caused chaos and disruption around the world on Friday. The company, CrowdStrike , based in Austin, Texas, makes software used by multinational corporations, government agencies and scores of other organizations to protect against hackers and online intruders.

But when CrowdStrike sent its update on Thursday to its customers that run Microsoft Windows software, computers began to crash.

The fallout, which was immediate and inescapable, highlighted the brittleness of global technology infrastructure. The world has become reliant on Microsoft and a handful of cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike. So when a single flawed piece of software is released over the internet, it can almost instantly damage countless companies and organizations that depend on the technology as part of everyday business.

“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Center and a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

A cyberattack did not cause the widespread outage, but the effects on Friday showed how devastating the damage can be when a main artery of the global technology system is disrupted. It raised broader questions about CrowdStrike’s testing processes and what repercussions such software firms should face when flaws in their code cause major disruptions.

How a Software Update Crashed Computers Around the World

Here’s a visual explanation for how a faulty software update crippled machines.

How the airline cancellations rippled around the world (and across time zones)

Share of canceled flights at 25 airports on Friday

50% of flights

Ai r po r t

Bengalu r u K empeg o wda

Dhaka Shahjalal

Minneapolis-Saint P aul

Stuttga r t

Melbou r ne

Be r lin B r anden b urg

London City

Amsterdam Schiphol

Chicago O'Hare

Raleigh−Durham

B r adl e y

Cha r lotte

Reagan National

Philadelphia

1:20 a.m. ET

CrowdStrike’s stock price so far this year

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