Massachusetts Legal Research

The second edition of Massachusetts Legal Research is designed to provide first-year law students a concise, practical introduction to the process of legal research. Law students, law clerks, practitioners, legal assistants, librarians, and laypeople will find it a useful introduction to Massachusetts legal sources. Massachusetts Legal Research has been extensively revised to outline a process of effective and efficient legal research that may incorporate print resources, free Internet resources, and commercial platforms. Introductory chapters discuss the importance of legal research in legal problem solving, strategies for locating relevant primary and secondary authority, and ways to evaluate research findings. Following these introductory chapters, Massachusetts Legal Research discusses legal secondary sources, and then addresses Massachusetts primary sources and techniques for using them with chapters on judicial opinions, statutes, administrative law, constitutions, and rules of court. An additional chapter discusses the legislative process. The book includes concise descriptions of federal sources and appendixes on full-text searching and citation. This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.