Interactive Legal Research & Writing: Secondary Sources (Laubach)

The secondary sources module explores how to find, select, and use secondary sources. You will identify examples of secondary sources, select the appropriate secondary source for a given research task, and navigate within secondary sources to identify relevant sections.

Lesson One explains what secondary sources are and how to find them, describes categories of secondary sources, and explores the role secondary sources can play in legal research projects. This understanding provides you with the foundation needed for Lessons Two and Three, which dive into specific types of secondary sources.

Lesson Two centers on a few of the most important secondary sources – legal treatises, legal encyclopedias, and American Law Reports – and allows you to conduct targeted research tasks within each of these sources.

Finally, Lesson Three explores law journals and practice guides, again allowing you to conduct research tasks using these sources. The lesson concludes with the opportunity to design and execute your own independent secondary source search in response to a research prompt.

Taken together, the three lessons of this module will prepare new legal researchers for efficient and strategic secondary source research.