Seminar Research at WVU College of Law

Research Planning for Your Seminar Paper 

Before jumping into your research, consider making a Research Plan and using a Research Log. Research Planning entails generating relevant keywords and predicting helpful sources and their order of use. A Research Log is a template you can use to record and annotate relevant located sources. Watch the video below for an introduction to Research Planning.  A model Research Plan and Research Log are available below in Word format.

Legal Research Plan and Research Log templates

Download templates for a legal research plan and research log that may be edited or to suit a research strategy or personal preference.

Tools to Organize Your Research

Zotero is a free, open source bibliographic management tool.  It works with a desktop app and a browser extension.  Use the browser extension (best in Firefox or Chrome) to save sources that you find online to collections in the Zotero app.  Juris-M is an adaptation of Zotero that improves how sources are saved for legal information, especially primary sources from platforms like Westlaw and Lexis.  This guide is an introduction to using Zotero/Juris-M for legal research: https://libguides.wvu.edu/law/zotero.