1. Collect basic facts: identify who’s involved, ascertain what law applies, define words, clarify abbreviations, understand legal systems and procedures (including citation rules), collect data.
2. Keep track of the major questions to be answered by your project. Keep them separated and maintain research logs documenting the work you have done in each source.
3. Begin to define the kinds of sources you should use. Think about resources in basic investigatory categories: who, when, where, why, how.
- Soures that you search acccording to who might have the information.
- Sources that you search because of where the information is important or where it has been referenced.
- Sources that you search because of when the information was available.
- Sources that you search because of why the information arose or developed significance.
- sources that you search because of how the information is presented.
