| name | legal-research |
| language | en |
| description | Guides legal research from issue framing through authority collection, jurisdiction scoping, source prioritization, synthesis, and pre-filing updates. Use when planning or auditing legal research, building a research trail, developing rule statements, comparing authorities, or updating citations before filing. |
Legal Research
Repeatable workflow for researching a legal issue, prioritizing controlling authority, and documenting a filing-ready research trail.
Use this skill for the overall research process.
Use authority-verification when the task specifically requires citation verification, source retrieval, or case.dev-based authority checks.
Quick Start
- Frame the legal question as one issue at a time.
- Identify jurisdiction, court level, and governing instruments.
- Collect primary authority first.
- Expand to persuasive and secondary authority only where needed.
- Synthesize the rule, competing authorities, and factual application.
- Recheck authorities immediately before filing.
Core Workflow
1. Frame the issue
Define:
- legal question
- elements or standards
- requested relief
- factual assumptions that matter to the answer
2. Scope the forum
Identify:
- governing jurisdiction
- controlling court level
- procedural posture
- any local rules or standing orders that affect the analysis
3. Collect primary authority
Start with:
- constitutions
- statutes
- regulations
- controlling cases
- local rules
4. Expand outward
Use persuasive authority and secondary sources to:
- fill doctrinal gaps
- compare competing approaches
- confirm terminology
- identify additional primary sources
5. Synthesize
Produce:
- rule statement
- authority hierarchy
- factual analogies
- risks, splits, and counterarguments
- open questions requiring more research
6. Update before filing
Before relying on the work product:
- recheck the controlling authorities
- confirm current statutory and regulatory text
- confirm local rules
- record the date of the final update
Research Trail
Always preserve:
- search query or issue label
- source consulted
- why the source matters
- jurisdiction and court level
- date checked
- unresolved questions
Pitfalls
- Starting with secondary sources and never tracing back to primary authority.
- Mixing binding and persuasive authority without labeling the difference.
- Ignoring procedural posture or standard of review.
- Omitting adverse authority.
- Treating stale research as filing-ready.
