DISABILITY LAW

Legal Research Mini-Playbook

CUNY Law Library Website

GETTING STARTED WITH SECONDARY SOURCES

Some Disability Specific Secondary Sources

Disability Discrimination in Employment (Westlaw)

Social Security Disability Claims: Practice & Procedure (Westlaw)

Social Security Disability Practice (Lexis)

Disability Law Compliance Manual (Westlaw)

Practical Guidance: Disability Discrimination and Accommodation (Bloomberg Law)

Litigation and Procedural Issues

Think of these as separate legal research issues and note that there are both annotated versions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and NY Civil Practice Law and Rules (so like statutory research) and also some great secondary sources that help you navigate them. See discussion and links on this page. 

ADVANCED / BOOLEAN SEARCHING

On both Westlaw and Lexis, click the "Advanced Search" link next to the main search box and the available terms and connectors for advanced searches are listed and/or linked. 

A few tips: keep it simple at the start to get a sense of the size of the pool and slowly refine your search. Getting a lot of results and not many seem relevant than you need to revise your search and/or rethink strategy. Very relevant results but not many of them? Broaden your search as you might be excluding relevant results.

NON-LEGAL SOURCES

If you need to do research that might touch social science research or other non-legal research issues, check out our page describing nonlegal electronic sources we subscribe to at CUNY Law.

Newspapers

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY RESEARCH

With any legislative history project, start by double checking whether it is necessary to start from scratch. Look for cases on the issue and use "legislative history" as an additional search term across them, sometimes a court has already examined the relevant legislative history. If it is federal legislative history, see this page. If it is NY legislative history, see this page. If it is legislative history from another state, start with some meta-research (researching how to research) and Google "research guide" and [insert state] legislative history. You will almost assuredly find sites like this one and this one about legislative history in Washington state. What is available for legislative history and what is traditionally used to illustrate it can vary from state to state.

ORGANIZING YOUR RESEARCH

Just like with studying for class or studying for the bar, different methods work for different people, but there are a few tools and strategies you should know about.

(1) Use "History" on Westlaw and Lexis - it keeps track of what documents you have looked at and what searches you have run. Especially in the world of clicking from hyperlink to hyperlink, this is very useful in finding something you looked at recently but can't remember exactly what it was.

(2) Note that on Westlaw there is a little glasses icon that sometimes shows up next to cases/sources in a search - that means you looked at that source recently. Very helpful if sorting through cases.

(3) Folders - both Westlaw and Lexis have folder systems and you a lot of flexibility to create a lot of structures - big picture folder, subfolders based on sub-issues, even subfolders based on elements of specific issue if it is helpful. A drawback here is if you are doing research across multiple legal research systems.

(4) The document dump method - a common organization method researchers use is to create a master document into which you place an outline and cut and paste sources, quotations, etc. Note that if this system works for you, you can cut and paste "with reference" on both Westlaw and Lexis and it will give you not only the quotation, but a citation to the source, usually with a pinpoint citation. "Standard" is their approximation of Bluebook, but it is not always correct and should not be used as an alternative to learning Bluebook.

BLUEBOOK

We can fake it till we make it for a while, but eventually, we need to learn how to ride this bike.  A few helpful things. 

(1) check out the "Quick Reference" examples in the front and back covers. Inside the back cover are Bluebook for court documents and legal memoranda for anyone writing memos at a legal internship. 

(2) I have on this website, a Bluebook cheatsheet with examples (including some from NY) that is also for legal memos. Follow those examples and you can get close. 

(3) Note that both Westlaw and Lexis allow you to choose language in a court case, right click and choose "copy with citation (standard)" and it will try to give you a Bluebook citation with a pinpoint cite to the page. For cases, the citations are fairly good, but not always perfect. (

(4) Do you want more comprehensive training on the Bluebook. Lexis has something called "Interactive Citation Workstation" (go to their main page and check on the right under "Tools and Resources"). 

(5) Have an odd source you need to figure out how to cite? One trick is to run a search in the law review databases for citations to it - what you will often find are multiple different ways of citing the same source. Bluebook likes to make you think there is always one definitive right answer, that is often untrue.

Dockets and Court Filings

If you need to access a docket or get court filings, start with this page. 


International & Foreign Research

These research topics sound fun and interesting (and they can be), but they are also labor intensive, complicated and can be frustrating, but it is just good to know that going in.  With these topics it is helpful to start by finding research guides on the general area (such as on researching international criminal law or researching the law of Egypt) to get an overview and then you want to see what kind of secondary sources might be available (law review articles are often helpful here).  For more detailed advice, see this page for international law research and this page for foreign law research.