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US Case Law

The United States Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. Lower courts on the federal level include the US Courts of Appeals, US District Courts, the US Court of Claims, and the US Court of International Trade and US Bankruptcy Courts. Federal courts hear cases involving matters related to the United States Constitution, other federal laws and regulations, and certain matters that involve parties from different states or countries and large sums of money in dispute.

Each state has its own judicial system that includes trial and appellate courts. The highest court in each state is often referred to as the “supreme” court, although there are some exceptions to this rule, for example, the New York Court of Appeals or the Maryland Court of Appeals. State courts generally hear cases involving state constitutional matters, state law and regulations, although state courts may also generally hear cases involving federal laws. States also usually have courts that handle only a specific subset of legal matters, such as family law and probate.

Case law, also known as precedent or common law, is the body of prior judicial decisions that guide judges deciding issues before them. Depending on the relationship between the deciding court and the precedent, case law may be binding or merely persuasive. For example, a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is binding on all federal district courts within the Fifth Circuit, but a court sitting in California (whether a federal or state court) is not strictly bound to follow the Fifth Circuit’s prior decision. Similarly, a decision by one district court in New York is not binding on another district court, but the original court’s reasoning might help guide the second court in reaching its decision.

Decisions by the US Supreme Court are binding on all federal and state courts.

US Federal Courts

Reported opinions from the us federal courts of appeals.

• Federal Reporter, 2nd Series (F.2d) (1924-1993)
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Opinions From the US Federal Courts of Appeals

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Library electronic resources outage May 29th and 30th

Between 9:00 PM EST on Saturday, May 29th and 9:00 PM EST on Sunday, May 30th users will not be able to access resources through the Law Library’s Catalog, the Law Library’s Database List, the Law Library’s Frequently Used Databases List, or the Law Library’s Research Guides. Users can still access databases that require an individual user account (ex. Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law), or databases listed on the Main Library’s A-Z Database List.

• Georgetown Law Library
• Research Process

Case Law Research Guide

Introduction.

• Print Case Reporters
• Online Resources for Cases
• Finding Cases: Digests, Headnotes, and Key Numbers
• Finding Cases: Terms & Connectors Searching

Key to Icons

• Georgetown only
• On Bloomberg
• More Info (hover)
• Preeminent Treatise

Every law student and practicing attorney must be able to find, read, analyze, and interpret case law. Under the common law principles of stare decisis, a court must follow the decisions in previous cases on the same legal topic. Therefore, finding cases is essential to finding out what the law is on a particular issue.

This guide will show you how to read a case citation and will set out the sources, both print and online, for finding cases. This guide also covers how to use digests, headnotes, and key numbers to find case law, as well as how to find cases through terms and connectors searching.

To find cases using secondary sources, such as legal encyclopedias or legal treatises, see our Secondary Sources Research Guide . For additional strategies to find cases, like using statutory annotations or citators, see our  Case Law Research Tutorial . Our tutorial also covers how to update cases using citators (Lexis’ Shepard’s tool and Westlaw’s KeyCite).

Basic Case Citation

A case citation is a reference to where a case (also called a  decision  or an  opinion  ) is printed in a book. The citation can also be used to retrieve cases from  Westlaw  and  Lexis . A case citation consists of a volume number, an abbreviation of the title of the book or other item, and a page number.  

The precise format of a case citation depends on a number of factors, including the jurisdiction, court, and type of case. You should review the rest of this section on citing cases (and the relevant rules in  The Bluebook ) before trying to format a case citation for the first time. See our Bluebook Guide for more information.

The basic format of a case citation is as follows:

Parallel Citations

When the same case is printed in different books, citations to more than one book may be given. These additional citations are known as  parallel citations .

Example: 265 U.S. 274, 68 L. Ed. 1016, 44 S. Ct. 565.

This means that the case you would find at page 565 of volume 44 of the  Supreme Court Reporter  (published by West) will be the same case you find on page 1016 of volume 68 of  Lawyers' Edition  (published by Lexis), and both will be the same as the opinion you find in the official government version,  United States Reports . Although the text of the opinion will be identical, the added editorial material will differ with each publisher.

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Reference Desk : Atrium, 2nd (Main) Floor (202) 662-9140 Request a Research Consultation  

Case law research tutorial.

Update History

Revised 4/22 (CMC) Updated 10/22 (MK) Links 07/2023 (VL)

• Next: Print Case Reporters >>
• © Georgetown University Law Library. These guides may be used for educational purposes, as long as proper credit is given. These guides may not be sold. Any comments, suggestions, or requests to republish or adapt a guide should be submitted using the Research Guides Comments form . Proper credit includes the statement: Written by, or adapted from, Georgetown Law Library (current as of .....).
• Last Updated: May 24, 2024 9:20 AM
• URL: https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/cases

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Finding Case Law

• Find Case Law by Topic or Keywords
• Find a Case by Citation or Party

Searching Databases

Searching by topic on westlaw -- west key number system, searching by topic on lexis+ -- headnotes, searching by topic on bloomberg law -- points of law.

• "One Good Case" Method
• Find Case Law from Secondary Sources
• Find Case Law from Statutes or Regulations

The searching method for case law topics differs between the major case law databases of Westlaw, Lexis+, and Bloomberg Law. It is helpful to search more than one database, since the results will vary slightly. Searching multiple databases ensures that you are gathering the best case law for your topic.

Before searching in any database, you'll need to know:

• your topic and any relevant keywords
• which jurisdiction applies to your legal problem
• which types of primary law apply to your topic, including federal and state statutes or regulations (see the Find Case Law from Statutes or Regulations page for more ideas)

Below, we'll talk about some techniques: constructing a search string and filtering.

Natural Language v. Terms and Connectors

Natural language searching is similar to how one searches on search engines like Google: you enter a string of keywords and rely on the search engine's algorithm to predict the relationship between terms. While you may use natural language searching in any of the legal databases, searching by terms and connectors yields more specific results based on your terms' relationship with each other - such as if you'd like the terms to appear in the same sentence or paragraph.

These operators differ slightly in each database, so please see  "Boolean Searching in BLaw, Lexis, and Westlaw"  for more information about how to use terms and connectors.

Filter by Jurisdiction

To filter results by a particular jurisdiction, you may either (a) select the court(s) of interest by choosing them in the "Search:" dropdown box, or, (b) by running a search and then filtering the results. 

(a) To add filters before searching, follow these steps:

1. Click the "All Jurisdictions" dropdown box, located on the main search bar.

2. Choose the jurisdiction(s) you would like to limit your results to.

3. Once you've selected the jurisdiction(s) you are interested in, if you want to only search for case law, click on the "All Content" dropdown box and select "Cases."

(b) to apply filters after running a search, follow these steps:

1. Run your search.

2. Choose your court(s) using the left sidebar. If you need more than one jurisdiction.

Westlaw includes a particularly useful tool for finding case law about a certain topic, called the West Key Number System. The West Key Number System was developed in the 19th Century by John B. West, and it is essentially an index to American Law: it uses both topics and a number system to form a classification system for legal topics. The key numbers are categorized topically in a hierarchical structure: with legal principles first categorized by broad categories followed by a narrower topic, and a Key Number is assigned to the most narrow topic. The image below is an example of this topic hierarchy:  

When Thomson Reuters receives a court opinion to add to Westlaw, the attorney editors at Westlaw first review the case. They then identify what they consider to be the important legal issues, which are then summarized and categorized by Key Number. 

The document below goes over how to use the Key Number System to find cases. It is an incredibly powerful tool that has allowed researchers to find cases by subject for over 100 years. 

• How to use the Key Number System
• "Westlaw's Key Number System" by Aamir Abdullah This short article from the August/September 2022 issue of the Colorado Lawyer gives a helpful overview of the West Key Number System, and how you can use it.

Lexis+ also has a headnote system that allows researchers to find cases by topic. The "Topics" tab (see the screenshot below) takes you to the index of main topics. Click on one of the main topics to see the subtopics. You can also search for your topic by using the "Search Topics" box.  Note:  you can either do a natural language search or a terms and connectors search in the "Search Topics" box.

If you click on a main topic, you will be taken to a page with subtopics, where you can browse to find the subtopic you want. The screenshot below is an example of this.

Once you find the subtopic you are interested in, click on the subtopic link to retrieve all documents for the topic. You can then use filters to narrow your results. The below screenshot shows the results if you click on the subtopic "Management Duties and Liabilities"

Points of Law on Bloomberg Law is different from the Westlaw and Lexis+ headnotes in a couple of key ways. The headnotes in both Westlaw and Lexis+ rely on an existing classification system of topics (i.e., an index). When attorney editors at both Westlaw and Lexis+ review a case, they identify important legal points in the case, summarize them as a headnote, and assign the headnote to a topic in the index. These headnotes are located at the top of the case. 

Conversely, Points of Law uses machine learning to identify legal principles, standards, and elements in court opinions. The tool then identifies and matches the legal statements by language similarity and frequency of that legal statement (at least 5 times). The Points of Law are highlighted in the text of the court opinion itself, and you can access a list of all the Points of Law found in the opinion. The below video tutorial goes over how to use Points of Law. 

• Bloomberg Law -- Points of Law Quick Reference Card
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• Updated: May 17, 2024 12:26 PM
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Free Legal Research Resources - United States

Federal law & gov't docs, secondary sources, data sources, getting help, how to use this guide.

This guide contains selected, free, online United States federal and state legal research materials.

Many lawyers have access to paid databases. Yet, combining paid and free resources, can help them to avoid potentially expensive searches. According to a 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report, nearly 60% of lawyers “say they regularly use free online resources to conduct legal research.”

• Legal Technology - ABA Legal Profile

For researchers without access to paid databases, the following resources may be essential. Legal research is often more effective when using a local law library. To learn more about law libraries throughout the United States, visit:

• Local Law Libraries by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 756 views this year

Range of Materials

The Constitution

Statutes and Legislative Materials

Statutes and legislative materials are becoming available freely online, with increasing frequency. Free resources can be a great starting place for statutory research. However, always make sure you confirm your findings in an authoritative version of the law.

Supreme Court

Case Law and Court Documents

Federal case law and court documents are often available freely online, particularly recently decided cases. Check the website of the deciding court for digital copies of their cases. In addition, the following resources provide free case law.

Case Validation

Case involves ensuring that cases have not been overruled or negatively impacted by later caselaw. Case searching and retrieval through free databases is increasingly achievable. However, paid services are still most often used to validate cases. Tools that facilitate this case validation process are called citators. The best way to access free citators is through state and local public law libraries. To find a state or local law library visit:

Executive Documents

State Statutes and Regulations

Many states and localities publish some or all of their legislative materials on their website. Consider starting with the website of the state or locality in question. Remember, materials on official government websites, may not be the “official copy.” The National Conference of State Legislators provides a list of State Legislative Websites.

The sources below provide alternatives for hard-to-find state materials.

State Case Law and Court Documents

Courts are increasingly making their materials freely available online, frequently via the court website. This is particularly true for state Supreme Courts. When looking for state case law, consider starting with the website of the deciding court. The National Center for State Courts provides a list of state court websites.

U.S. Treaties

Several government-sponsored websites provide the full-text of U.S. treaties on the web. Refer to the list below for date ranges for each sources.

Foreign & International Law

For free resources on foreign and international law, see our foreign and international law guide:

• Free Legal Research Resources - Foreign & International by AJ Blechner Last Updated Sep 12, 2023 742 views this year

Journal Search & Legal Opinions - Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers access to many legal documents including patents, legal opinions and journals. Use the search box below and select the appropriate options from the dropdown menu at the top left of your screen.

While many journals are only available through paid databases, high-quality, open access journals are increasingly common. The following sources collect freely available journal articles.

Books, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Treatises, Dissertations, Etc.

Secondary sources are also increasingly available online for free. 

Federal Data Sources

Many government data sources are made available to the public for free online. Check the websites of relevant agencies or organizations to look for additional data.

• Additional sources are available on the Harvard Law School Library's website.

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How to do legal research in 3 steps

Knowing where to start a difficult legal research project can be a challenge. But if you already understand the basics of legal research, the process can be significantly easier — not to mention quicker.

Solid research skills are crucial to crafting a winning argument. So, whether you are a law school student or a seasoned attorney with years of experience, knowing how to perform legal research is important — including where to start and the steps to follow.

What is legal research, and where do I start? 

Black's Law Dictionary defines legal research as “[t]he finding and assembling of authorities that bear on a question of law." But what does that actually mean? It means that legal research is the process you use to identify and find the laws — including statutes, regulations, and court opinions — that apply to the facts of your case.

In most instances, the purpose of legal research is to find support for a specific legal issue or decision. For example, attorneys must conduct legal research if they need court opinions — that is, case law — to back up a legal argument they are making in a motion or brief filed with the court.

Alternatively, lawyers may need legal research to provide clients with accurate legal guidance . In the case of law students, they often use legal research to complete memos and briefs for class. But these are just a few situations in which legal research is necessary.

Why is legal research hard?

Each step — from defining research questions to synthesizing findings — demands critical thinking and rigorous analysis.

1. Identifying the legal issue is not so straightforward. Legal research involves interpreting many legal precedents and theories to justify your questions. Finding the right issue takes time and patience.

2. There's too much to research. Attorneys now face a great deal of case law and statutory material. The sheer volume forces the researcher to be efficient by following a methodology based on a solid foundation of legal knowledge and principles.

3. The law is a fluid doctrine. It changes with time, and staying updated with the latest legal codes, precedents, and statutes means the most resourceful lawyer needs to assess the relevance and importance of new decisions.

Legal research can pose quite a challenge, but professionals can improve it at every stage of the process . 

Step 1: Key questions to ask yourself when starting legal research

Before you begin looking for laws and court opinions, you first need to define the scope of your legal research project. There are several key questions you can use to help do this.

What are the facts?

Always gather the essential facts so you know the “who, what, why, when, where, and how” of your case. Take the time to write everything down, especially since you will likely need to include a statement of facts in an eventual filing or brief anyway. Even if you don't think a fact may be relevant now, write it down because it may be relevant later. These facts will also be helpful when identifying your legal issue.

What is the actual legal issue?

You will never know what to research if you don't know what your legal issue is. Does your client need help collecting money from an insurance company following a car accident involving a negligent driver? How about a criminal case involving excluding evidence found during an alleged illegal stop?

No matter the legal research project, you must identify the relevant legal problem and the outcome or relief sought. This information will guide your research so you can stay focused and on topic.

What is the relevant jurisdiction?

Don't cast your net too wide regarding legal research; you should focus on the relevant jurisdiction. For example, does your case deal with federal or state law? If it is state law, which state? You may find a case in California state court that is precisely on point, but it won't be beneficial if your legal project involves New York law.

Where to start legal research: The library, online, or even AI?

In years past, future attorneys were trained in law school to perform research in the library. But now, you can find almost everything from the library — and more — online. While you can certainly still use the library if you want, you will probably be costing yourself valuable time if you do.

When it comes to online research, some people start with free legal research options , including search engines like Google or Bing. But to ensure your legal research is comprehensive, you will want to use an online research service designed specifically for the law, such as Westlaw . Not only do online solutions like Westlaw have all the legal sources you need, but they also include artificial intelligence research features that help make quick work of your research

Step 2: How to find relevant case law and other primary sources of law

Now that you have gathered the facts and know your legal issue, the next step is knowing what to look for. After all, you will need the law to support your legal argument, whether providing guidance to a client or writing an internal memo, brief, or some other legal document.

But what type of law do you need? The answer: primary sources of law. Some of the more important types of primary law include:

• Case law, which are court opinions or decisions issued by federal or state courts
• Statutes, including legislation passed by both the U.S. Congress and state lawmakers
• Regulations, including those issued by either federal or state agencies
• Constitutions, both federal and state

Searching for primary sources of law

So, if it's primary law you want, it makes sense to begin searching there first, right? Not so fast. While you will need primary sources of law to support your case, in many instances, it is much easier — and a more efficient use of your time — to begin your search with secondary sources such as practice guides, treatises, and legal articles.

Why? Because secondary sources provide a thorough overview of legal topics, meaning you don't have to start your research from scratch. After secondary sources, you can move on to primary sources of law.

For example, while no two legal research projects are the same, the order in which you will want to search different types of sources may look something like this:

• Secondary sources . If you are researching a new legal principle or an unfamiliar area of the law, the best place to start is secondary sources, including law journals, practice guides , legal encyclopedias, and treatises. They are a good jumping-off point for legal research since they've already done the work for you. As an added bonus, they can save you additional time since they often identify and cite important statutes and seminal cases.
• Case law . If you have already found some case law in secondary sources, great, you have something to work with. But if not, don't fret. You can still search for relevant case law in a variety of ways, including running a search in a case law research tool.

Once you find a helpful case, you can use it to find others. For example, in Westlaw, most cases contain headnotes that summarize each of the case's important legal issues. These headnotes are also assigned a Key Number based on the topic associated with that legal issue. So, once you find a good case, you can use the headnotes and Key Numbers within it to quickly find more relevant case law.

• Statutes and regulations . In many instances, secondary sources and case law list the statutes and regulations relevant to your legal issue. But if you haven't found anything yet, you can still search for statutes and regs online like you do with cases.

Once you know which statute or reg is pertinent to your case, pull up the annotated version on Westlaw. Why the annotated version? Because the annotations will include vital information, such as a list of important cases that cite your statute or reg. Sometimes, these cases are even organized by topic — just one more way to find the case law you need to support your legal argument.

Keep in mind, though, that legal research isn't always a linear process. You may start out going from source to source as outlined above and then find yourself needing to go back to secondary sources once you have a better grasp of the legal issue. In other instances, you may even find the answer you are looking for in a source not listed above, like a sample brief filed with the court by another attorney. Ultimately, you need to go where the information takes you.

Step 3: Make sure you are using ‘good’ law

One of the most important steps with every legal research project is to verify that you are using “good" law — meaning a court hasn't invalidated it or struck it down in some way. After all, it probably won't look good to a judge if you cite a case that has been overruled or use a statute deemed unconstitutional. It doesn't necessarily mean you can never cite these sources; you just need to take a closer look before you do.

The simplest way to find out if something is still good law is to use a legal tool known as a citator, which will show you subsequent cases that have cited your source as well as any negative history, including if it has been overruled, reversed, questioned, or merely differentiated.

For instance, if a case, statute, or regulation has any negative history — and therefore may no longer be good law — KeyCite, the citator on Westlaw, will warn you. Specifically, KeyCite will show a flag or icon at the top of the document, along with a little blurb about the negative history. This alert system allows you to quickly know if there may be anything you need to worry about.

Some examples of these flags and icons include:

• A red flag on a case warns you it is no longer good for at least one point of law, meaning it may have been overruled or reversed on appeal.
• A yellow flag on a case warns that it has some negative history but is not expressly overruled or reversed, meaning another court may have criticized it or pointed out the holding was limited to a specific fact pattern.
• A blue-striped flag on a case warns you that it has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals.
• The KeyCite Overruling Risk icon on a case warns you that the case may be implicitly undermined because it relies on another case that has been overruled.

Another bonus of using a citator like KeyCite is that it also provides a list of other cases that merely cite your source — it can lead to additional sources you previously didn't know about.

Perseverance is vital when it comes to legal research

Given that legal research is a complex process, it will likely come as no surprise that this guide cannot provide everything you need to know.

There is a reason why there are entire law school courses and countless books focused solely on legal research methodology. In fact, many attorneys will spend their entire careers honing their research skills — and even then, they may not have perfected the process.

So, if you are just beginning, don't get discouraged if you find legal research difficult — almost everyone does at first. With enough time, patience, and dedication, you can master the art of legal research.

Thomson Reuters originally published this article on November 10, 2020.

Related insights

Westlaw tip of the week: Checking cases with KeyCite

Why legislative history matters when crafting a winning argument

Case law research tools: The most useful free and paid offerings

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Case Studies

The program’s portfolio of situational case studies presents narratives of real-life events and asks students to identify and analyze the relevant legal, social, business, ethical, and scientific issues involved. Playing the role of protagonist in each case study—such as a private attorney counseling a biotechnology company facing hazardous waste issues, or a federal official seeking to develop an effective fishery management plan—students formulate appropriate strategies for achieving workable solutions to conflicts, then discuss and debate their recommendations in class. This interactive approach to learning bolsters students’ acquisition of skills in critical areas: factual investigation, legal research, counseling, persuasive oral communication, and recognition and resolution of ethical dilemmas, to name a few.

The Stanford Law School Case Studies Collection is an exciting innovation in law school teaching designed to hone students’ problem-solving skills and stimulate creativity. The Collection includes situational case studies and interactive simulations (collectively referred to as “Case Materials”) that place students in the roles of lawyers and policy makers and teach fundamental lawyering skills such as investigating facts, counseling, and resolving ethical dilemmas.

In June of 1997 the  Environmental and Natural Resources Law Policy Program  hired an experienced environmental lawyer to develop “situational” case studies for use in classroom instruction to better prepare students for the practice of law in the real world. Most of the case studies have been field tested in the classroom and evaluated for effectiveness in increasing student mastery of fundamental lawyering skills and increasing student participation in classroom discussion. Feedback from students has been excellent. Stanford Law School plans to unveil case studies collections in the areas of Law and Business in the coming years.

You can use this site to download Case Materials for examination. With prior permission from Stanford Law School, instructors can also obtain copies of Case Materials they want to use in the classroom for free. This Case Studies Collection will be updated regularly as we add new Case Materials and revise existing Materials, so visit the site from time to time for new developments!

As used in our website, the phrase “case materials” refers to case studies and simulations, as well as accompanying exhibits and teaching notes. While both case studies and simulations can be used as tools in the “case study teaching method,” they are different in form and manner of use. A case study is a narrative that recounts the factual history of an event or series of events. It is typically used as the basis for in-class analysis and discussion. A simulation is a set of facts, roles and rules that establishes the framework for an in-class participatory exercise.

Research has shown that existing law school teaching methods and curricula do not adequately teach students the full complement of “lawyering” skills they need to competently practice law. The traditional appellate case method assumes that a problem has reached a point where litigation is the only alternative, and presents students with a scenario in which all relevant issues have been identified, the questions of law narrowly focused, and the questions of fact resolved. Skills-oriented courses and clinical programs (such as law clinics and externships) have made significant contributions to law schools’9 ability to teach lawyering skills. Their reach, however, has been limited by a combination of factors, including their high cost and the relatively few law students who actually take advantage of these programs.

While we do not envision the case study method displacing the appellate case method or clinical programs, we do believe that the case method can be used in conjunction with existing teaching methods to add considerable educational value. Case studies and simulations immerse students in real-world problems and situations, requiring them to grapple with the vagaries and complexities of these problems in a relatively risk-free environment – the classroom.

Incorporation of case studies and simulations into environmental law school curriculums can bolster student skill acquisition in the critical areas listed below. Based on a 1990-1991 American Bar Association questionnaire, the MacCrate Task Force concluded that traditional law school curricula and teaching methods fall short in teaching these fundamental lawyering skills:

• problem solving
• legal research
• factual investigation
• persuasive oral communications
• negotiation
• recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas
• organization and management of legal work

The case study teaching method is adapted from the case method developed and used successfully for many years by the nation’s leading business schools. The method uses a narrative of actual events to teach and hone the skills students need to competently practice law. Students identify for themselves the relevant legal, social, business, and scientific issues presented, and identify appropriate responses regarding those issues. Suggested questions for class discussion are prepared in connection with each case study, itself the product of long, probing interviews of the people involved in the actual events. These narratives, or case studies, may be long or short, and portray emotion, character, setting and dialogue. Students present their thoughts on key issues during class discussion, usually from the viewpoint of the key protagonist in the case study.

Simulations are typically used to reinforce and synthesize concepts, skills and substantive law already covered in a course. The simulations are designed for limited instructor and maximum student involvement during the exercise itself. However, once the exercise has drawn to a close, ample time should be allotted for a debriefing session. During the debriefing, instructors and students can engage in a candid discussion of the relative effectiveness of different approaches used during the simulation, clear up any lingering questions about substantive issues, and probe ethical and/or policy issues raised by the simulation.

Requesting Permission to Copy or to Use Materials

Send your request for permission to use or copy Case Materials to  [email protected] . To assist us in reviewing such requests and tracking the actual use of our Case Materials, please provide a description of the course (of up to 500 words) for which the Case Materials will be used. In addition, please include a brief description of the kind of course for which the Case Materials are intended, including:

• Whether the course is an elective or required course, undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education.
• The nature of the academic program and institution in which the course will be taught, such as law school, business school, Earth Sciences department, public interest law firm, etc.
• The number of times the course has been offered.
• Expected enrollment for the course.
• The history of the course’s development.

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How to Analyze Case Law

Last Updated: January 21, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was written by Jennifer Mueller, JD . Jennifer Mueller is an in-house legal expert at wikiHow. Jennifer reviews, fact-checks, and evaluates wikiHow's legal content to ensure thoroughness and accuracy. She received her JD from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2006. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 127,186 times.

When you hear the word "law," you may assume the word refers to statutes passed by Congress and state legislatures. But a major portion of American law actually is case law – the rules appellate judges distill from their interpretation of statutes and other sources. Accordingly, much of law school is spent learning how to analyze case law. However, attending law school isn't strictly necessary to acquire this valuable skill. You can teach yourself how to analyze case law, which begins – but doesn't end – with a thorough reading of the court's written opinion.

Summarizing the Facts

• The first time you read through a case, don't worry about trying to understand it. Just read for a sense of what's happening, who the major parties are, and what they want the court to do.
• Keep in mind that legal opinions aren't written for laypeople, or even for law students or attorneys – they are written for other judges. If you don't understand something (assuming you're not an appellate court judge), there's nothing wrong with that.
• You may have to go outside the opinion itself and look at other articles about the case, and then come back to it. For example, if you're reading a case that caused quite a stir in the media when it was decided, there will no doubt be newspaper and magazine articles about it. Reading those can help you better understand the court opinion.
• Many cases have summaries that appear before the case and let you know the basics of what happened, the issue before the court, and how the court resolved that issue. The summary can be helpful, but don't use it as a substitute for an initial read-through of the case.

• To make party identification even more confusing, party names may switch sides of the "v." in the case caption depending on who appealed. For example, suppose when a case began, Sally Sunshine sued Marvin Moon. The case's caption would be "Sunshine v. Moon." The trial court found in favor of Ms. Sunshine – but Mr. Moon appealed. The caption then became "Moon v. Sunshine."
• To continue the example, suppose the appellate court found in favor of Mr. Moon, but Ms. Sunshine appealed that ruling to a higher court. Now the case's caption is "Sunshine v. Moon" again.
• Since litigants in written opinions typically are only identified by their roles – appellant and appellee, for example – their names may only be mentioned once.

• Since the procedural history determines the role of the litigants, and thus what each of them is called throughout the written opinion, understanding how the case moved through the court system – who sued whom, and who appealed – is paramount to understanding the case.
• At the same time, you don't need to go into too much detail here. You just need to understand who filed the original lawsuit (which will help you understand the facts of the case), the decision at trial, and who appealed and why.

• At the appellate level, the courts are concerned with legal issues, not questions of fact. So, for example, if you are reading a case that came about as a result of a bar fight, the factual question of whether one party assaulted the other has already been resolved.
• In many cases, the initial facts that prompted the dispute may be summarized in a sentence or two. Often, what's really important is what happened afterward.
• Keep in mind that not all judges are the best writers. While you may be tempted to believe a particular fact is important because the judge who wrote the opinion spent several paragraphs discussing it, this is not necessarily the case.
• As you read more and more cases, particularly if the cases you read are focused on a particular court, you will become familiar with the styles of individual judges. This can make it easier for you to immediately notice when the judge is focusing on facts he or she believes are central to the case's holding.

Identifying the Issue and Decision

• Essentially, you're looking for what the person who appealed the lower court's ruling wanted to happen, that didn't. To find the issue, you must figure out what that person thought the lower court did wrong, and why.
• This usually isn't about something as simple as one person believing he should have been awarded more money, or a criminal defendant not wanting to go to jail. That might be part of an appellant's personal motivation, but to have a legitimate appeal you must be able to point to some way that the lower court made a legal error.
• In many cases, the legal error isn't an obvious error. The lower court may have applied the law correctly – but the appellant is arguing that her case is different from the cases that developed the rule the lower court used, or that the lower court should have used a different rule.
• Often in Supreme Court cases, there isn't a rule that can be handed down from previous cases and applied in this case, because no court has ever decided a case like this one. In these situations, it's up to the court to figure out how to tackle this new issue, and where it fits in to the long line of American jurisprudence.

• In some cases, the issue before the court involves multiple yes/no questions, or a follow-up question that is conditional on the answer to the first.
• This usually happens when a particular factual situation present in the case has never been explored by any other court. The court must first determine whether a particular law applies to that factual situation at all before it can decide how the law applies.
• For example, suppose a baker has been fined by the local government for creating cupcakes with expletives written in icing. The court may first have to determine whether icing on cupcakes is the sort of speech or expression protected by the First Amendment, before it can reach the real issue of whether the baker's First Amendment rights have been violated.

• Some judges have a very clear, straightforward writing style, and they'll phrase the issue as a question and answer it directly. However, this isn't usually the case. In most written opinions, you should expect to dig for the question and answer, which you'll have to craft yourself.
• When more than one question is asked, sometimes the answer to the first takes care of all the others. To look at the earlier cupcake-icing example, if the court had determined that no, icing on cupcakes is not protected by the First Amendment, the second question disappears. You don't have to consider whether the baker's First Amendment rights were violated by the fine, because she didn't have any First Amendment rights in the first place.
• When the answer is qualified with a "sometimes," any conditional questions that follow likewise will have qualifications. #Note any significant dissents. In many cases, particularly at the Supreme Court level, a justice who disagrees with the majority will issue a dissent. As time passes and court interpretation evolves, a significant dissent may end up being a majority opinion later on when the court reverses or overturns an earlier decision. [12] X Research source
• There also may be concurrences, which are separate opinions written by justices who agree with the ultimate outcome of the case, but not with the reasoning the majority applied to get there. Often a concurrence can help you understand the majority's reasoning, particularly if it seemed convoluted on first read.
• Unless you understand where the case you're reading falls in the history and development of that particular area of law, you may not be able to recognize which other opinions are important until you do further research.
• If you're unsure, it's best to simply note other opinions – be they dissents or concurrences – and the key difference between them and the majority's opinion.
• Especially if you're reading a Supreme Court case, you also should note which justice authored the dissent or concurrence. As justices leave the court and are replaced, the values and judicial temperament of the majority also can change.
• A dissent from a decade ago may become a majority opinion tomorrow – often written by the same justice, now carrying the majority where he or she once held a minority view.

Understanding the Reasoning

• Make note of the case from which the rule came, although typically it's not necessary for you to go back and read the case itself to understand the rule.
• However, if a significant portion of the opinion discusses the previous case, you may want to go back and read it as well so you have a better understanding of what the court is talking about.
• In some opinions (especially those penned by judges with straightforward writing styles), the rule used by the court will follow trigger phrases such as "the rule we apply is" or "we decide this case by applying the rule from" – phrases that alert you the court is about to tell you exactly what rule they used.
• Most opinions won't be this direct, and require a closer analysis of the language to ascertain the rule the court used. Sometimes you can figure this out by working backwards. Read the court's decision, and then follow the court's train of logic in reverse until you reach the rule.

• The application of a legal precedent to the facts of a case is the heart of legal analysis. This typically is done using similes. Seldom has the exact issue been presented before – to make a decision, the court must determine that this case is like a different case, and therefore the same rule should apply.
• Keep in mind that, especially if you're analyzing a Supreme Court case, the court wouldn't have accepted that case on appeal if it didn't present a new issue that had not already been decided in an earlier case.
• For this reason, there likely won't be a precedent that is entirely on point, or a previous case with the same fact pattern in which the same issue was raised and decided.
• Rather, the court must compare cases to find a rule that applies closely and is based on a similar situation that is analogous to the dispute presented.

• Sometimes the easiest way to locate the court's pivotal fact or facts is to consider what would have happened if they'd chosen to focus on a different fact.
• For example, if the court in the case of the beleaguered baker had decided to focus on the fact that cupcakes are food, and food has never been protected under the First Amendment, it might have arrived at a different decision than it did. Because the court focused instead on the fact that the baker wrote words with icing, just as writers write words in ink, and concluded that written words inarguably enjoy First Amendment protection.
• Although many other facts may be relevant, or important to some other aspect of the case, those aren't the facts that made the court rule the way it did.

• No court case exists in isolation. Once a court issues a decision, the legal interpretation and rules it establishes become part of the larger body of law devoted to that particular issue. Each opinion helps future courts understand more about the statute or constitutional provision at the heart of the case.
• You don't have to wait for future courts to apply the rule you've just learned to other cases, however. Take the facts in the original case and twist them slightly, then apply the rule yourself.
• Law professors call these imaginary cases "hypotheticals," and spend a good portion of class churning them out and asking their students to apply the rule they've learned to sometimes bizarre and convoluted stories.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.gareth-evans.com/how-to-read-understand-and-summarise-legal-cases/
• ↑ http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/lawschool/pre-law/reading-a-casebook.page
• ↑ https://www.monash.edu/learnhq/write-like-a-pro/annotated-assessment-samples/law/law-case-note
• ↑ https://utas.libguides.com/legal_research/caselaw
• ↑ http://www.cengage.com/resource_uploads/downloads/0324654553_91282.pdf
• ↑ https://lawschool.westlaw.com/marketing/display/SG/3
• ↑ http://www.csun.edu/~kkd61657/brief.pdf

About This Article

Case law refers to the decisions appellate judges make from their interpretations of former cases. To analyze specific case law, you’ll need to read the case through and try to get a feel for how the court made their decision. It can be pretty complex when you’re first reading a case, so jot down the main parties, the main dispute, and a brief history of the case to help yourself keep track. Once you understand the case, try to identify the legal rules the court used to make their decision. It’s also helpful to imagine different scenarios where the rule the case established could be applied, and whether or not the outcome would be the same. To learn how to focus on the most important facts of a case, read more from our Legal co-author! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Case Law: Searching for Australian Cases

• Case citators

Case Citators are law databases that help you find:

• the citation to a case,
• the full text of the judgment in a case,
• cases and legislation cited in a case, and
• subsequent legal history of a case and which cases have relied on it.

Case Citators may also refer you to journal articles about a case, and other related secondary materials such as encyclopedia entries.

There are three recommended case citators available through UTS Library:

You might be asking, "why do I need to know how to search three citators? Can't you just show me how to search the best one?"

The answer is that these three citators have their strengths and weaknesses. To do a comprehensive search for Australian cases you need to know how to search all three of them.

• Searching case citators
• Lexis Advance Pacific

Lexis Advance Pacific is a database that covers a wide range of legal resources. CaseBase is the case citator accessed through Lexis Advance Pacific.

CaseBase provides citation information and full text reports for many Australian and overseas cases, as well as links to journal articles and other secondary materials.

Watch this video to find out how you can search Lexis Advance Pacific (CaseBase) to find cases:

Westlaw AU is another popular database to find legal resources. KeyCite is the case citator accessed through Westlaw AU.

KeyCite provides case citation information, and summaries of important cases and helps to find similar and related cases. A notable feature of KeyCite is the Key Number System , where all case material is grouped into a detailed classification scheme that allows easy browsing for cases in the same category.

Watch the videos linked below for further details on using Westlaw.

AustLII is a free website for Australian legal resources. LawCite is the case citator accessed through AustLII.

LawCite contains indexed cases and journal articles. Notably, it has links to medium neutral case reports for all higher courts and some lower courts. It also provides full-text access to many Australian Law Review articles and Australian Law Reform Commission Reports .

Watch this video to find out how you can search AustLII to find cases:

• Interpreting your results

Now that you have found your case report in Lexis Advance Pacific (CaseBase) , this video will explain how to locate useful information about it:

The full text of CLR is not available in Lexis Advance Pacific but can be found in Westlaw AU. This is indicated by the absence of a hyperlink to the CLR in the list of citations under the case title.

In Lexis Advance Pacific, the list of citations under the case title is arranged in order of authority from left to right.

The full text for most State authorised series, e.g. NSWLR, is available in Lexis Advance Pacific.

Editors of Lexis Advance Pacific assign Signals and Annotations to cases within tables in CaseBase:

The ' signals ' next to each of the cases mentioned in a case report indicate whether the case decision has received positive , negative , cautionary or neutral treatment in subsequent judgments.

' Annotations ' indicate whether the corresponding case was approved , followed , overruled or questioned by the judges of the case you are researching.

For a detailed explanation of signals and annotations, see the ' CaseBase Signal Help' link on the right-hand side of Lexis Advance Pacific's case search screen (also linked below). 

Watch the videos below for further details on interpreting search results in Westlaw.

Now that you have found your case report in AustLII (LawCite) , this video will explain how to locate useful information about it:

The Citations column contains all known citations for a case or article. Clicking on any blue linked citations will bring up the full-text of the case or article. You can also hover over a citation to see what it is (i.e. which journal or series of law reports). The order of citations is medium neutral citation first (if any), authorised citation next (if any) and then citations ordered by how often they have been referenced.

Flags indicate the nationality of the decision or article. It is intended to make it easy to see at a glance where the source originates from.

Dates refer to the date that a decision was handed down. A year is the year that a decision or journal article was first published.

Where the case or article is frequently cited, a number of "stars" will appear. The greater the number of stars, the greater the popularity of a case or article. Each star indicates approximately 50 citations.

The information in AustLII is generally machine-generated and has not been checked by human editors. Compare Lexis Advance Pacific 'Signals' and Westlaw 'status symbols'.

Further explanation of information can be found on 'LawCite Case and Article Help' page (see below).

Review your results

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. 

If your results are not relevant, try reviewing your search strategy by asking the following questions:

• What exactly are you looking for?
• Are you looking in the most appropriate resource?
• What type of information were you expecting?
• Do you need subsequent cases? Do any of the subsequent cases change the validity of your case?
• Do you need authorised reports? Are they available?
• Do you need more information to understand your cases? Eg commentary, journal articles, entries in legal encyclopaedias.
• Do you need to find other cases on the same legal topic?
• << Previous: Understanding Case Citations
• Next: Finding Foreign Cases >>
• Types of Australian Case Reports
• Understanding Case Citations
• Reviewing your results
• Finding Foreign Cases
• Legal Abbreviations
• Referencing Cases

Related Guides

• Legislation Guide
• Secondary Sources in Law Guide
• International Law Guide
• Taxation Law Guide
• Migration & Citizenship Guide

Need more help?

• Last Updated: Mar 12, 2024 3:24 PM
• URL: https://studyguides.lib.uts.edu.au/caselaw

• QUT Library
• Library guides
• Case Law research (Australia)

Finding cases on a topic

• Understanding case citations
• Common case abbreviations
• Court hierarchy
• Identify parts of a case
• Using Case citators
• Finding cases from a citation
• Finding judicial consideration
• Finding commentary
• Finding sentencing remarks
• Which version to cite?
• Help and Feedback

1. Develop multiple search terms to conduct research using Keyword; Browsing; Field searching

Hints: 

• Choose search terms that are specific or closely related to the subject matter. Example: malpractice OR negligence
• Consider using abbreviations or buzzwords. Example: Freedom of Information Act OR FOI
• The terms should reflect ideas essential to your research topic, such as application, liability, or sentence.
• Include alternative terms. Example: "In pari delicto"  OR equal fault
• Avoid terms that are too general, such as 'duty of care' or tort

1. Try these databases

        Westlaw (Australia) Cases  - is an online case law research tool, and can be used to research the litigation history of a particular case, read summaries of key cases or research a particular area of law.

       Casebase  (LexisNexis Butterworth - Australia) - with complete case details including: Parties, Court, Judges, Citation and Decision Date; Parallel Citations; Case Annotations; Statute Annotations; Words and Phrases Judicially Considered; Catchwords and Digest.

       Queensland Legal Indices Online  - is a judgments indexing service initiated by the SCQL in 1984. Coverage includes the Queensland Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and District Court, as well as the Planning and Environment Court and some other Queensland Tribunals.

        Australian Current Law  - ACL Reporter provides comprehensive digests of all available judgments from the High Court, the Federal Court and the State Supreme courts, as well as important decisions from the Family Court, Federal Magistrate's Court, AAT and selected tribunals .

2. Full text database of law reports and unreported judgments such as

          Austlii  - provides free internet access to Australasian legal materials.

          Queensland Courts  - includes access to full-text judgments from the Queensland Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, District Court, and Planning & Environment Court. 

3. You can also use Secondary Sources such as CCH Online , Textbooks, Journals, Encyclopedias   to locate relevant caselaw

Develop multiple search terms to conduct research

• Identify issues and sub-issues from your problem and use them to generate keywords
• Avoid terms that are too general, such as 'duty of care' or tort, or combine broad general terms with more specific keywords
• The terms should reflect ideas essential to your research topic, such as application, liability, or sentence
• Look at the database Help for database specific keyword instructions

Use search strategies

Browsing A caselaw database may have a browse option for finding cases on a topic. For example, in Australian Current Law (ACL) Reporter on LexisNexis AU (LNau) you can browse for cases on a topic by expanding the Table of Contents. Look at the database 'help' pages and guides for database specific browsing instructions.

Keyword searches Generate keywords from the legal issues you identify. Consider using alternative keywords as illustrated in the box above. You will find alternative keywords in your background reading, thesauri and subject fields of the results you find when searching. Look at the database 'help' pages and guides for specific keyword instructions. 

Field searches Use the fields available in a search template to return highly relevant results. For example, in a citator or full text judgments database, a catchword field search for "battered woman syndrome" will only retrieve cases where the phrase is contained in the catchwords. Look at the database 'help' pages and guides for database specific Field information.

Databases to use to find cases on a topic

• Australian Current Law A database of case digests from 1976 to present including comprehensive digests of judgments from the High Court, Federal Court, Federal Magistrates Court and the State Supreme courts, with selected decisions from the Family Court, Land and Environment Court NSW, Administrative Appeals Tribunal and various tribunals. QUT Library subscription. more... less... You can browse ACL Issues in chronological order to find cases on a topic but the preferred option is to search for case on a topic. Fields designed to find cases on a topic include the Catchwords/ Summary and Subject fields.

These are the preferred databases to use to find cases on a topic.

• CaseBase A case citator. The information is sourced from reported and unreported judgments of superior Commonwealth and state courts. QUT Library subscription. more... less... A search on caseBase is conducted across the text of CaseBase records not the full text of judgments. Choose between free text (searches across entire CaseBase resords) and Field (searches within the chosen field/s only) options. The Catchwords/ summary field is designed to find cases on a topic. Look at the database Help for database specific information.
• Queensland Legal Indices Online An index to Queensland caselaw and a case citator. The information is sourced from unreported judgments from the Queensland Court of Appeal, Queensland Supreme Court, Queensland District Court and a number of tribunals from 1984. QUT Library subscription. more... less... Advanced Search searches within the text of QLI records only. Keyword Search searches within the text of QLI records and the fulltext of any pdf judgment attached to a QLI record. Fields designed to find cases on a topic include the Catchwords and QLI Subject Heading fields.

Use the KeyCite citation research service to help verify whether the case is still good law and to find citing references by using KeyCite Flags , KeyCite History and KeyCite Citing References . For further detail see Westlaw (Australia) - KeyCite Guide .

Additional databases you can use to find cases on a topic

You can also search fulltext judgment databases to find cases on a topic.   This method is useful if you do not have access to subscription based case research tools such as those listed above .

• AustLII Unreported judgments from Australian Commonwealth and state courts, commissions and tribunals. Select relevant jurisdiction and court case law databases. Free internet.
• Queensland Judgments Supreme Court of Queensland Library. Unreported judgments from Queensland courts and tribunals. Free internet.

You can also use Commentary   to locate caselaw on a topic.

Caselaw alerting services

Keep up to date with new case law. You can subscribe to these case law alerting services.

Queensland Legal Updater Weekly alert for significant new Queensland caselaw. Once you have registered you can customise the alert to caselaw in a specific area of law. Free service. You will receive an alert only when there is a new judgment matching your customised account.

Daily Unreported Judgments Notifier (LNau) Twice daily email alerts to new Australian unreported judgments from all jurisdictions. Only available with LNau paid subscription . You can customise subject and jurisdiction. You will receive an alert even if there are no new judgments matching your customised subscription.

BarNet Jade Alerts Email alerts to new Australian unreported judgments from all jurisdictions. Available when you take out a free subscription to Jade (Judgments and Decisions Enhanced). An alert contains summaries of relevant cases and links to the full text of the cases. You will receive an alert only when there is a new judgment matching your customised subscription.

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AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 (or More) Benchmarking Queries

A new study reveals the need for benchmarking and public evaluations of AI tools in law.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly transforming the practice of law. Nearly  three quarters of lawyers plan on using generative AI for their work, from sifting through mountains of case law to drafting contracts to reviewing documents to writing legal memoranda. But are these tools reliable enough for real-world use?

Large language models have a documented tendency to “hallucinate,” or make up false information. In one highly-publicized case, a New York lawyer  faced sanctions for citing ChatGPT-invented fictional cases in a legal brief;  many similar cases have since been reported. And our  previous study of general-purpose chatbots found that they hallucinated between 58% and 82% of the time on legal queries, highlighting the risks of incorporating AI into legal practice. In his  2023 annual report on the judiciary , Chief Justice Roberts took note and warned lawyers of hallucinations. 

Across all areas of industry, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is seen and promoted as the solution for reducing hallucinations in domain-specific contexts. Relying on RAG, leading legal research services have released AI-powered legal research products that they claim  “avoid” hallucinations and guarantee  “hallucination-free” legal citations. RAG systems promise to deliver more accurate and trustworthy legal information by integrating a language model with a database of legal documents. Yet providers have not provided hard evidence for such claims or even precisely defined “hallucination,” making it difficult to assess their real-world reliability.

AI-Driven Legal Research Tools Still Hallucinate

In a new  preprint study by  Stanford RegLab and  HAI researchers, we put the claims of two providers, LexisNexis (creator of Lexis+ AI) and Thomson Reuters (creator of Westlaw AI-Assisted Research and Ask Practical Law AI)), to the test. We show that their tools do reduce errors compared to general-purpose AI models like GPT-4. That is a substantial improvement and we document instances where these tools provide sound and detailed legal research. But even these bespoke legal AI tools still hallucinate an alarming amount of the time: the Lexis+ AI and Ask Practical Law AI systems produced incorrect information more than 17% of the time, while Westlaw’s AI-Assisted Research hallucinated more than 34% of the time.

Read the full study, Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools

To conduct our study, we manually constructed a pre-registered dataset of over 200 open-ended legal queries, which we designed to probe various aspects of these systems’ performance.

Broadly, we investigated (1) general research questions (questions about doctrine, case holdings, or the bar exam); (2) jurisdiction or time-specific questions (questions about circuit splits and recent changes in the law); (3) false premise questions (questions that mimic a user having a mistaken understanding of the law); and (4) factual recall questions (questions about simple, objective facts that require no legal interpretation). These questions are designed to reflect a wide range of query types and to constitute a challenging real-world dataset of exactly the kinds of queries where legal research may be needed the most.

Figure 1: Comparison of hallucinated (red) and incomplete (yellow) answers across generative legal research tools.

These systems can hallucinate in one of two ways. First, a response from an AI tool might just be  incorrect —it describes the law incorrectly or makes a factual error. Second, a response might be  misgrounded —the AI tool describes the law correctly, but cites a source which does not in fact support its claims.

Given the critical importance of authoritative sources in legal research and writing, the second type of hallucination may be even more pernicious than the outright invention of legal cases. A citation might be “hallucination-free” in the narrowest sense that the citation  exists , but that is not the only thing that matters. The core promise of legal AI is that it can streamline the time-consuming process of identifying relevant legal sources. If a tool provides sources that  seem authoritative but are in reality irrelevant or contradictory, users could be misled. They may place undue trust in the tool's output, potentially leading to erroneous legal judgments and conclusions.

Figure 2:  Top left: Example of a hallucinated response by Westlaw's AI-Assisted Research product. The system makes up a statement in the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure that does not exist (and Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443 (2004) held that a closely related bankruptcy deadline provision was not jurisdictional). Top right: Example of a hallucinated response by LexisNexis's Lexis+ AI. Casey and its undue burden standard were overruled by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022); the correct answer is rational basis review. Bottom left: Example of a hallucinated response by Thomson Reuters's Ask Practical Law AI. The system fails to correct the user’s mistaken premise—in reality, Justice Ginsburg joined the Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage—and instead provides additional false information about the case. Bottom right: Example of a hallucinated response from GPT-4, which generates a statutory provision that has not been codified.

RAG Is Not a Panacea

Figure 3: An overview of the retrieval-augmentation generation (RAG) process. Given a user query (left), the typical process consists of two steps: (1) retrieval (middle), where the query is embedded with natural language processing and a retrieval system takes embeddings and retrieves the relevant documents (e.g., Supreme Court cases); and (2) generation (right), where the retrieved texts are fed to the language model to generate the response to the user query. Any of the subsidiary steps may introduce error and hallucinations into the generated response. (Icons are courtesy of FlatIcon.)

Under the hood, these new legal AI tools use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to produce their results, a method that many tout as a potential solution to the hallucination problem. In theory, RAG allows a system to first  retrieve the relevant source material and then use it to  generate the correct response. In practice, however, we show that even RAG systems are not hallucination-free. 

We identify several challenges that are particularly unique to RAG-based legal AI systems, causing hallucinations. 

First, legal retrieval is hard. As any lawyer knows, finding the appropriate (or best) authority can be no easy task. Unlike other domains, the law is not entirely composed of verifiable  facts —instead, law is built up over time by judges writing  opinions . This makes identifying the set of documents that definitively answer a query difficult, and sometimes hallucinations occur for the simple reason that the system’s retrieval mechanism fails.

Second, even when retrieval occurs, the document that is retrieved can be an inapplicable authority. In the American legal system, rules and precedents differ across jurisdictions and time periods; documents that might be relevant on their face due to semantic similarity to a query may actually be inapposite for idiosyncratic reasons that are unique to the law. Thus, we also observe hallucinations occurring when these RAG systems fail to identify the truly binding authority. This is particularly problematic as areas where the law is in flux is precisely where legal research matters the most. One system, for instance, incorrectly recited the “undue burden” standard for abortion restrictions as good law, which was overturned in  Dobbs (see Figure 2). 

Third, sycophancy—the tendency of AI to agree with the user's incorrect assumptions—also poses unique risks in legal settings. One system, for instance, naively agreed with the question’s premise that Justice Ginsburg dissented in  Obergefell , the case establishing a right to same-sex marriage, and answered that she did so based on her views on international copyright. (Justice Ginsburg did not dissent in  Obergefell and, no, the case had nothing to do with copyright.) Notwithstanding that answer, here there are optimistic results. Our tests showed that both systems generally navigated queries based on false premises effectively. But when these systems do agree with erroneous user assertions, the implications can be severe—particularly for those hoping to use these tools to increase access to justice among  pro se and under-resourced litigants.

Responsible Integration of AI Into Law Requires Transparency

Ultimately, our results highlight the need for rigorous and transparent benchmarking of legal AI tools. Unlike other domains, the use of AI in law remains alarmingly opaque: the tools we study provide no systematic access, publish few details about their models, and report no evaluation results at all.

This opacity makes it exceedingly challenging for lawyers to procure and acquire AI products. The large law firm  Paul Weiss spent nearly a year and a half testing a product, and did not develop “hard metrics” because checking the AI system was so involved that it “makes any efficiency gains difficult to measure.” The absence of rigorous evaluation metrics makes responsible adoption difficult, especially for practitioners that are less resourced than Paul Weiss. 

The lack of transparency also threatens lawyers’ ability to comply with ethical and professional responsibility requirements. The bar associations of  California ,  New York , and  Florida have all recently released guidance on lawyers’ duty of supervision over work products created with AI tools. And as of May 2024,  more than 25 federal judges have issued standing orders instructing attorneys to disclose or monitor the use of AI in their courtrooms.

Without access to evaluations of the specific tools and transparency around their design, lawyers may find it impossible to comply with these responsibilities. Alternatively, given the high rate of hallucinations, lawyers may find themselves having to verify each and every proposition and citation provided by these tools, undercutting the stated efficiency gains that legal AI tools are supposed to provide.

Our study is meant in no way to single out LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. Their products are far from the only legal AI tools that stand in need of transparency—a slew of startups offer similar products and have  made   similar   claims , but they are available on even more restricted bases, making it even more difficult to assess how they function. 

Based on what we know, legal hallucinations have not been solved.The legal profession should turn to public benchmarking and rigorous evaluations of AI tools. 

This story was updated on Thursday, May 30, 2024, to include analysis of a third AI tool, Westlaw’s AI-Assisted Research.

Paper authors: Varun Magesh is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Faiz Surani is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Matthew Dahl is a joint JD/PhD student in political science at Yale University and graduate student affiliate of Stanford RegLab. Mirac Suzgun is a joint JD/PhD student in computer science at Stanford University and a graduate student fellow at Stanford RegLab. Christopher D. Manning is Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science, and Senior Fellow at HAI. Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow at HAI, Senior Fellow at SIEPR, and Director of the RegLab at Stanford University. 

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How to write a case brief for law school: Excerpt reproduced from Introduction to the Study of Law: Cases and Materials,

Third Edition (LexisNexis 2009) by Michael Makdisi & John Makdisi

C. HOW TO BRIEF

The previous section described the parts of a case in order to make it easier to read and identify the pertinent information that you will use to create your briefs. This section will describe the parts of a brief in order to give you an idea about what a brief is, what is helpful to include in a brief, and what purpose it serves. Case briefs are a necessary study aid in law school that helps to encapsulate and analyze the mountainous mass of material that law students must digest. The case brief represents a final product after reading a case, rereading it, taking it apart, and putting it back together again. In addition to its function as a tool for self-instruction and referencing, the case brief also provides a valuable “cheat sheet” for class participation.

Who will read your brief? Most professors will espouse the value of briefing but will never ask to see that you have, in fact, briefed. As a practicing lawyer, your client doesn’t care if you brief, so long as you win the case. The judges certainly don’t care if you brief, so long as you competently practice the law. You are the person that the brief will serve! Keep this in mind when deciding what elements to include as part of your brief and when deciding what information to include under those elements.

What are the elements of a brief? Different people will tell you to include different things in your brief. Most likely, upon entering law school, this will happen with one or more of your instructors. While opinions may vary, four elements that are essential to any useful brief are the following:

(a) Facts (name of the case and its parties, what happened factually and procedurally, and the judgment)

(b) Issues (what is in dispute)

(c) Holding (the applied rule of law)

(d) Rationale (reasons for the holding)

If you include nothing but these four elements, you should have everything you need in order to recall effectively the information from the case during class or several months later when studying for exams.

Because briefs are made for yourself, you may want to include other elements that expand the four elements listed above. Depending on the case, the inclusion of additional elements may be useful. For example, a case that has a long and important section expounding dicta might call for a separate section in your brief labeled: Dicta. Whatever elements you decide to include, however, remember that the brief is a tool intended for personal use. To the extent that more elements will help with organization and use of the brief, include them. On the other hand, if you find that having more elements makes your brief cumbersome and hard to use, cut back on the number of elements. At a minimum, however, make sure you include the four elements listed above.

Elements that you may want to consider including in addition to the four basic elements are:

(e) Dicta (commentary about the decision that was not the basis for the decision)

(f) Dissent (if a valuable dissenting opinion exits, the dissent’s opinion)

(g) Party’s Arguments (each party’s opposing argument concerning the ultimate issue)

(h) Comments (personal commentary)

Personal comments can be useful if you have a thought that does not fit elsewhere. In the personal experience of one of the authors, this element was used to label cases as specific kinds (e.g., as a case of vicarious liability) or make mental notes about what he found peculiar or puzzling about cases. This element allowed him to release his thoughts (without losing them) so that he could move on to other cases.

In addition to these elements, it may help you to organize your thoughts, as some people do, by dividing Facts into separate elements:

(1) Facts of the case (what actually happened, the controversy)

(2) Procedural History (what events within the court system led to the present case)

(3) Judgment (what the court actually decided)

Procedural History is usually minimal and most of the time irrelevant to the ultimate importance of a case; however, this is not always true. One subject in which Procedure History is virtually always relevant is Civil Procedure.

When describing the Judgment of the case, distinguish it from the Holding. The Judgment is the factual determination by the court, in favor of one party, such as “affirmed,” “reversed,” or “remanded.” In contrast, the Holding is the applied rule of law that serves as the basis for the ultimate judgment.

Remember that the purpose of a brief is to remind you of the important details that make the case significant in terms of the law. It will be a reference tool when you are drilled by a professor and will be a study aid when you prepare for exams. A brief is also like a puzzle piece.

The elements of the brief create the unique shape and colors of the piece, and, when combined with other pieces, the picture of the common law takes form. A well-constructed brief will save you lots of time by removing the need to return to the case to remember the important details and also by making it easier to put together the pieces of the common law puzzle.

D. EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTING

So now that you know the basic elements of a brief, what information is important to include under each element? The simple answer is: whatever is relevant. But what parts of a case are relevant? When you read your first few cases, you may think that everything that the judge said was relevant to his ultimate conclusion. Even if this were true, what is relevant for the judge to make his decision is not always relevant for you to include in your brief. Remember, the reason to make a brief is not to persuade the world that the ultimate decision in the case is a sound one, but rather to aid in refreshing your memory concerning the most important parts of the case.

What facts are relevant to include in a brief? You should include the facts that are necessary to remind you of the story. If you forget the story, you will not remember how the law in the case was applied. You should also include the facts that are dispositive to the decision in the case. For instance, if the fact that a car is white is a determining factor in the case, the brief should note that the case involves a white car and not simply a car. To the extent that the procedural history either helps you to remember the case or plays an important role in the ultimate outcome, you should include these facts as well.

What issues and conclusions are relevant to include in a brief? There is usually one main issue on which the court rests its decision. This may seem simple, but the court may talk about multiple issues, and may discuss multiple arguments from both sides of the case. Be sure to distinguish the issues from the arguments made by the parties. The relevant issue or issues, and corresponding conclusions, are the ones for which the court made a final decision and which are binding. The court may discuss intermediate conclusions or issues, but stay focused on the main issue and conclusion which binds future courts.

What rationale is important to include in a brief? This is probably the most difficult aspect of the case to determine. Remember that everything that is discussed may have been relevant to the judge, but it is not necessarily relevant to the rationale of the decision. The goal is to remind yourself of the basic reasoning that the court used to come to its decision and the key factors that made the decision favor one side or the other.

A brief should be brief! Overly long or cumbersome briefs are not very helpful because you will not be able to skim them easily when you review your notes or when the professor drills you. On the other hand, a brief that is too short will be equally unhelpful because it lacks sufficient information to refresh your memory. Try to keep your briefs to one page in length. This will make it easy for you to organize and reference them.

Do not get discouraged. Learning to brief and figuring out exactly what to include will take time and practice. The more you brief, the easier it will become to extract the relevant information.

While a brief is an extremely helpful and important study aid, annotating and highlighting are other tools for breaking down the mass of material in your casebook. The remainder of this section will discuss these different techniques and show how they complement and enhance the briefing process.

Annotating Cases

Many of you probably already read with a pencil or pen, but if you do not, now is the time to get in the habit. Cases are so dense and full of information that you will find yourself spending considerable amounts of time rereading cases to find what you need. An effective way to reduce this time is to annotate the margins of the casebook. Your pencil (or pen) will be one of your best friends while reading a case. It will allow you to mark off the different sections (such as facts, procedural history, or conclusions), thus allowing you to clear your mind of thoughts and providing an invaluable resource when briefing and reviewing.

You might be wondering why annotating is important if you make an adequate, well-constructed brief. By their very nature briefs cannot cover everything in a case. Even with a thorough, well-constructed brief you may want to reference the original case in order to reread dicta that might not have seemed important at the time, to review the complete procedural history or set of facts, or to scour the rationale for a better understanding of the case; annotating makes these tasks easier. Whether you return to a case after a few hours or a few months, annotations will swiftly guide you to the pertinent parts of the case by providing a roadmap of the important sections. Your textual markings and margin notes will refresh your memory and restore specific thoughts you might have had about either the case in general or an individual passage.

Annotations will also remind you of forgotten thoughts and random ideas by providing a medium for personal comments.

In addition to making it easier to review an original case, annotating cases during the first review of a case makes the briefing process easier. With adequate annotations, the important details needed for your brief will be much easier to retrieve. Without annotations, you will likely have difficulty locating the information you seek even in the short cases. It might seem strange that it would be hard to reference a short case, but even a short case will likely take you at least fifteen to twenty-five minutes to read, while longer cases may take as much as thirty minutes to an hour to complete. No matter how long it takes, the dense material of all cases makes it difficult to remember all your thoughts, and trying to locate specific sections of the analysis may feel like you are trying to locate a needle in a haystack. An annotation in the margin, however, will not only swiftly guide you to a pertinent section, but will also refresh the thoughts that you had while reading that section.

When you read a case for the first time, read for the story and for a basic understanding of the dispute, the issues, the rationale, and the decision. As you hit these elements (or what you think are these elements) make a mark in the margins. Your markings can be as simple as “facts” (with a bracket that indicates the relevant part of the paragraph). When you spot an issue, you may simply mark “issue” or instead provide a synopsis in your own words. When a case sparks an idea — write that idea in the margin as well — you never know when a seemingly irrelevant idea might turn into something more.

Finally, when you spot a particularly important part of the text, underline it (or highlight it as described below).

With a basic understanding of the case, and with annotations in the margin, the second read-through of the case should be much easier. You can direct your reading to the most important sections and will have an easier time identifying what is and is not important. Continue rereading the case until you have identified all the relevant information that you need to make your brief, including the issue(s), the facts, the holding, and the relevant parts of the analysis.

Pencil or pen — which is better to use when annotating? Our recommendation is a mechanical pencil. Mechanical pencils make finer markings than regular pencils, and also than ballpoint pens. Although you might think a pencil might smear more than a pen, with its sharp point a mechanical pencil uses very little excess lead and will not smear as much as you might imagine. A mechanical pencil will also give you the freedom to make mistakes without consequences. When you first start annotating, you may think that some passages are more important than they really are, and therefore you may resist the urge to make a mark in order to preserve your book and prevent false guideposts. With a pencil, however, the ability to erase and rewrite removes this problem.

Highlighting

Why highlight? Like annotating, highlighting may seem unimportant if you create thorough, well-constructed briefs, but highlighting directly helps you to brief. It makes cases, especially the more complicated ones, easy to digest, review and use to extract information.

Highlighting takes advantage of colors to provide a uniquely effective method for reviewing and referencing a case. If you prefer a visual approach to learning, you may find highlighting to be a very effective tool.

If annotating and highlighting are so effective, why brief? Because the process of summarizing a case and putting it into your own words within a brief provides an understanding of the law and of the case that you cannot gain through the process of highlighting or annotating.

The process of putting the case into your own words forces you to digest the material, while annotating and highlighting can be accomplished in a much more passive manner.

What should you highlight? Similar to annotating, the best parts of the case to highlight are those that represent the needed information for your brief such as the facts, the issue, the holding and the rationale.

Unlike annotating, highlighting provides an effective way to color code, which makes referring to the case even easier. In addition, Highlighters are particularly useful in marking off entire sections by using brackets. These brackets will allow you to color-code the case without highlighting all the text, leaving the most important phrases untouched for a more detailed highlight marking or underlining.

Highlighting is a personal tool, and therefore should be used to the extent that highlighting helps, but should be modified in a way that makes it personally time efficient and beneficial. For instance, you might combine the use of annotations in the margins with the visual benefit of highlighting the relevant text. You may prefer to underline the relevant text with a pencil, but to use a highlighter to bracket off the different sections of a case. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it works for you, regardless of what others recommend. The techniques in the remainder of this section will describe ways to make full use of your highlighters.

First, buy yourself a set of multi-colored highlighters, with at least four, or perhaps five or six different colors. Yellow, pink, and orange are usually the brightest. Depending on the brand, purple and green can be dark, but still work well. Although blue is a beautiful color, it tends to darken and hide the text.

Therefore we recommend that you save blue for the elements that you rarely highlight.

For each different section of the case, choose a color, and use that color only when highlighting the section of the case designated for that color. Consider using yellow for the text that you tend to highlight most frequently. Because yellow is the brightest, you may be inclined to use yellow for the Conclusions in order to make them stand out the most. If you do this, however, you will exhaust your other colors much faster than yellow and this will require that you purchase an entire set of new highlighters when a single color runs out because colors such as green are not sold separately. If instead you choose to use yellow on a more frequently highlighted section such as the Analysis, when it comes time to replace your yellow marker, you will need only to replace your yellow highlighter individually. In the personal experience on one of the authors, the sections of cases that seemed to demand the most highlighter attention were the

Facts and the Analysis, while the Issues and Holdings demanded the least. Other Considerations and

Procedural History required lots of highlighting in particular cases although not in every case.

Experiment if you must, but try to choose a color scheme early on in the semester and stick with it. That way, when you come back to the first cases of the semester, you will not be confused with multiple color schemes. The basic sections of a case for which you should consider giving a different color are:

(b) Procedural History

(c) Issue (and questions presented)

(d) Holding (and conclusions)

(e) Analysis (rationale)

(f) Other Considerations (such as dicta)

Not all of these sections demand a separate color. You may find that combining Facts and Procedural History or Issues and Holdings works best. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some sections may not warrant highlighting in every case (e.g., dicta probably do not need to be highlighted unless they are particularly important). If you decide that a single color is all that you need, then stick to one, but if you find yourself highlighting lots of text from many different sections, reconsider the use of at least a few different colors. Highlighters make text stand out, but only when used appropriately. The use of many colors enables you to highlight more text without reducing the highlighter’s effectiveness. Three to four colors provides decent color variation without the cumbersomeness of handling too many markers.

Once you are comfortable with your color scheme, determining exactly what to highlight still may be difficult. Similar to knowing what to annotate, experience will perfect your highlighting skills. Be careful not to highlight everything, thus ruining your highlighters’ effectiveness; at the same time, do not be afraid to make mistakes.

Now that we have covered the basics of reading, annotating, highlighting, and briefing a case, you are ready to start practicing. Keep the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter in mind when you tackle the four topics in the remainder of this book. If you have difficultly, refer back to this chapter to help guide you as you master the case method of study and the art of using the common law.

More Helpful Links

The american legal system, how to brief a case, how to read a casebook 101, top 20 things you need to know about law school, learn to spot issues like a lawyer, why an internet search is not legal research, why go to law school, what’s the most challenging part of law school, what advice would you give yourself about law school.

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“How to Write Case Studies: A Comprehensive Guide”

Case studies are essential for marketing and research, offering in-depth insights into successes and problem-solving methods. This blog explains how to write case studies, including steps for creating them, tips for analysis, and case study examples. You'll also find case study templates to simplify the process. Effective case studies establish credibility, enhance marketing efforts, and provide valuable insights for future projects.

Case studies are detailed examinations of subjects like businesses, organizations, or individuals. They are used to highlight successes and problem-solving methods. They are crucial in marketing, education, and research to provide concrete examples and insights.

This blog will explain how to write case studies and their importance. We will cover different applications of case studies and a step-by-step process to create them. You’ll find tips for conducting case study analysis, along with case study examples and case study templates.

Effective case studies are vital. They showcase success stories and problem-solving skills, establishing credibility. This guide will teach you how to create a case study that engages your audience and enhances your marketing and research efforts.

What are Case Studies?

1. Definition and Purpose of a Case Study

Case studies are in-depth explorations of specific subjects to understand dynamics and outcomes. They provide detailed insights that can be generalized to broader contexts.

2. Different Types of Case Studies

• Exploratory: Investigates an area with limited information.
• Explanatory: Explains reasons behind a phenomenon.
• Descriptive: Provides a detailed account of the subject.
• Intrinsic : Focuses on a unique subject.
• Instrumental: Uses the case to understand a broader issue.

3. Benefits of Using Case Studies

Case studies offer many benefits. They provide real-world examples to illustrate theories or concepts. Businesses can demonstrate the effectiveness of their products or services. Researchers gain detailed insights into specific phenomena. Educators use them to teach through practical examples. Learning how to write case studies can enhance your marketing and research efforts.

Understanding how to create a case study involves recognizing these benefits. Case study examples show practical applications. Using case study templates can simplify the process.

5 Steps to Write a Case Study

1. Identifying the Subject or Case

Choose a subject that aligns with your objectives and offers valuable insights. Ensure the subject has a clear narrative and relevance to your audience. The subject should illustrate key points and provide substantial learning opportunities. Common subjects include successful projects, client stories, or significant business challenges.

2. Conducting Thorough Research and Data Collection

Gather comprehensive data from multiple sources. Conduct interviews with key stakeholders, such as clients, team members, or industry experts. Use surveys to collect quantitative data. Review documents, reports, and any relevant records. Ensure the information is accurate, relevant, and up-to-date. This thorough research forms the foundation for how to write case studies that are credible and informative.

3. Structuring the Case Study

Organize your case study into these sections:

• Introduction: Introduce the subject and its significance. Provide an overview of what will be covered.
• Background: Provide context and background information. Describe the subject’s history, environment, and any relevant details.
• Case Presentation: Detail the case, including the problem or challenge faced. Discuss the actions taken to address the issue.
• Analysis: Analyze the data and discuss the findings. Highlight key insights, patterns, and outcomes.
• Conclusion: Summarize the outcomes and key takeaways. Reflect on the broader implications and lessons learned.

4. Writing a Compelling Introduction

The introduction should grab the reader’s attention. Start with a hook, such as an interesting fact, quote, or question. Provide a brief overview of the subject and its importance. Explain why this case is relevant and worth studying. An engaging introduction sets the stage for how to create a case study that keeps readers interested.

5. Providing Background Information and Context

Give readers the necessary background to understand the case. Include details about the subject’s history, environment, and any relevant circumstances. Explain the context in which the case exists, such as the industry, market conditions, or organizational culture. Providing a solid foundation helps readers grasp the significance of the case and enhances the credibility of your study.

Understanding how to write a case study involves meticulous research and a clear structure. Utilizing case study examples and templates can guide you through the process, ensuring you present your findings effectively. These steps are essential for writing informative, engaging, and impactful case studies. 

How to Write Case Study Analysis

1. Analyzing the Data Collected

Examine the data to identify patterns, trends, and key findings. Use qualitative and quantitative methods to ensure a comprehensive analysis. Validate the data’s accuracy and relevance to the subject. Look for correlations and causations that can provide deeper insights.

2. Identifying Key Issues and Problems

Pinpoint the main issues or challenges faced by the subject. Determine the root causes of these problems. Use tools like SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to get a clear picture. Prioritize the issues based on their impact and urgency.

3. Discussing Possible Solutions and Their Implementation

Explore various solutions that address the identified issues. Compare the potential effectiveness of each solution. Discuss the steps taken to implement the chosen solutions. Highlight the decision-making process and the rationale behind it. Include any obstacles faced during implementation and how they were overcome.

4. Evaluating the Results and Outcomes

Assess the outcomes of the implemented solutions. Use metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure success. Compare the results with the initial objectives and expectations. Discuss any deviations and their reasons. Provide evidence to support your evaluation, such as before-and-after data or testimonials.

5. Providing Insights and Lessons Learned

Reflect on the insights gained from the case study. Discuss what worked well and what didn’t. Highlight lessons that can be applied to similar situations. Provide actionable recommendations for future projects. This section should offer valuable takeaways for the readers, helping them understand how to create a case study that is insightful and practical.

Mastering how to write case studies involves understanding each part of the analysis. Use case study examples to see how these elements are applied. Case study templates can help you structure your work. Knowing how to make a case study analysis will make your findings clear and actionable.

Case Study Examples and Templates

1. Showcasing Successful Case Studies

Georgia tech athletics increase season ticket sales by 80%.

Georgia Tech Athletics aimed to enhance their season ticket sales and engagement with fans. Their initial strategy involved multiple outbound phone calls without targeting. They partnered with Salesloft to improve their sales process with a more structured inbound approach. This allowed sales reps to target communications effectively. As a result, Georgia Tech saw an 80% increase in season ticket sales, with improved employee engagement and fan relationships​.

WeightWatchers Revamps Enterprise Sales Process with HubSpot

WeightWatchers sought to improve their sales efficiency. Their previous system lacked automation, requiring extensive manual effort. By adopting HubSpot’s CRM, WeightWatchers streamlined their sales process. The automation capabilities of HubSpot allowed them to manage customer interactions more effectively. This transition significantly enhanced their operational efficiency and sales performance​.

2. Breakdown of What Makes These Examples Effective

These case study examples are effective due to their clear structure and compelling storytelling. They:

• Identify the problem: Each case study begins by outlining the challenges faced by the client.
• Detail the solution: They explain the specific solutions implemented to address these challenges.
• Showcase the results: Quantifiable results and improvements are highlighted, demonstrating the effectiveness of the solutions.
• Use visuals and quotes: Incorporating images, charts, and client testimonials enhances engagement and credibility.

3. Providing Case Study Templates

To assist in creating your own case studies, here are some recommended case study templates:

1. General Case Study Template

• Suitable for various industries and applications.
• Includes sections for background, problem, solution, and results.
• Helps provide a structured narrative for any case study.

2. Data-Driven Case Study Template

• Focuses on presenting metrics and data.
• Ideal for showcasing quantitative achievements.
• Structured to highlight significant performance improvements and achievements.

3. Product-Specific Case Study Template

• Emphasizes customer experiences and satisfaction with a specific product.
• Highlights benefits and features of the product rather than the process.

4. Tips for Customizing Templates to Fit Your Needs

When using case study templates, tailor them to match the specific context of your study. Consider the following tips:

• Adapt the language and tone: Ensure it aligns with your brand voice and audience.
• Include relevant visuals: Add charts, graphs, and images to support your narrative.
• Personalize the content: Use specific details about the subject to make the case study unique and relatable.

Utilizing these examples and templates will guide you in how to write case studies effectively. They provide a clear framework for how to create a case study that is engaging and informative. Learning how to make a case study becomes more manageable with these resources and examples​.

Tips for Creating Compelling Case Studies

1. Using Storytelling Techniques to Engage Readers

Incorporate storytelling techniques to make your case study engaging. A compelling narrative holds the reader’s attention.

2. Including Quotes and Testimonials from Participants

Add quotes and testimonials to add credibility. Participant feedback enhances the authenticity of your study.

3. Visual Aids: Charts, Graphs, and Images to Support Your Case

Use charts, graphs, and images to illustrate key points. Visual aids help in better understanding and retention.

4. Ensuring Clarity and Conciseness in Writing

Write clearly and concisely to maintain reader interest. Avoid jargon and ensure your writing is easy to follow.

5. Highlighting the Impact and Benefits

Emphasize the positive outcomes and benefits. Show how the subject has improved or achieved success.

Understanding how to write case studies involves using effective storytelling and visuals. Case study examples show how to engage readers, and case study templates help organize your content. Learning how to make a case study ensures that it is clear and impactful.

Benefits of Using Case Studies

1. Establishing Authority and Credibility

How to write case studies can effectively establish your authority. Showcasing success stories builds credibility in your field.

2. Demonstrating Practical Applications of Your Product or Service

Case study examples demonstrate how your product or service solves real-world problems. This practical evidence is convincing for potential clients.

3. Enhancing Marketing and Sales Efforts

Use case studies to support your marketing and sales strategies. They highlight your successes and attract new customers.

4. Providing Valuable Insights for Future Projects

Case studies offer insights that can guide future projects. Learning how to create a case study helps in applying these lessons effectively.

5. Engaging and Educating Your Audience

Case studies are engaging and educational. They provide detailed examples and valuable lessons. Using case study templates can make this process easier and more effective. Understanding how to make a case study ensures you can communicate these benefits clearly.

Writing effective case studies involves thorough research, clear structure, and engaging content. By following these steps, you’ll learn how to write case studies that showcase your success stories and problem-solving skills. Use the case study examples and case study templates provided to get started. Well-crafted case studies are valuable tools for marketing, research, and education. Start learning how to make a case study today and share your success stories with the world.

What is the purpose of a case study?

A case study provides detailed insights into a subject, illustrating successes and solutions. It helps in understanding complex issues.

How do I choose a subject for my case study?

Select a subject that aligns with your objectives and offers valuable insights. Ensure it has a clear narrative.

What are the key components of a case study analysis?

A case study analysis includes data collection, identifying key issues, discussing solutions, evaluating outcomes, and providing insights.

Where can I find case study templates?

You can find downloadable case study templates online. They simplify the process of creating a case study.

How can case studies benefit my business?

Case studies establish credibility, demonstrate practical applications, enhance marketing efforts, and provide insights for future projects. Learning how to create a case study can significantly benefit your business.

I am currently pursuing my Masters in Communication and Journalism from University of Mumbai. I am the author of four self published books. I am interested inv writing for films and TV. I run a blog where I write about film reviews.

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Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

 Famous Case Studies

• Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
• Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
• Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
• Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
• Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

• Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
• Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
• Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

• Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
• Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
• Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

• Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
• Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
• Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
• Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
• Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
• Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

• Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
• Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
• Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

• News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
• Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
• Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
• Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

• Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
• Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
• School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

• Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
• Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

• Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
• Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
• Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
• Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
• Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
• Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

• Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
• Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
• For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

• Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
• Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
• Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

• Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
• References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
• Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
• Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
• Provides insight for further research.
• Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

• Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
• Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
• Difficult to replicate.
• Time-consuming and expensive.
• The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895).  Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head.  Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868).  Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head .  Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2  (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972).  Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

• Case Study Approach
• Case Study Method
• Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
• “We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
• Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

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Cross-Cultural Research Methodology In Psychology

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Criterion Validity: Definition & Examples

Questions to Ask Before Heading to Law School

Some research and self-assessment can help J.D. hopefuls make the best decision about law school, experts say.

Questions to Ask Ahead of Law School

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Asking yourself some difficult questions about your law school aspirations can provide clarity.

Earning a law degree is a crucial step in the path to a legal career and requires a significant investment of money, time and energy. Before heading to law school , prospective law students should reflect on their motivations and determine if they'd find a legal job fulfilling, experts say.

This means asking questions that require self-assessment, such as why they want to be a lawyer, which school is best for their goals and when it would be best to start. It's also wise to speak with practicing attorneys and alumni of target programs, experts say.

"When you meet, find out why they are in their current careers and practice areas," says Katherine Scannell, vice dean for institutional success at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law in Missouri. "Learn what they do on an average day, what they love about their careers and what is the most challenging. Understanding both what does and does not interest you is incredibly valuable."

Here are some questions experts say J.D. hopefuls should ask before heading to law school.

Do I Really Want to Be a Lawyer?

Because law school requires a major time and financial investment, law school hopefuls should seriously consider why they want to be a lawyer, experts say.

"Are you attracted to law for the income potential, skill development, because you like a legal television series or you just don’t know what else to do with your undergrad degree?" Scannell says. "Think carefully and be intentional. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but you should consider the financial and time investment."

How Do I Know if I Should Become a Lawyer?

Unlike how it may appear on television, being a lawyer isn't always glamorous. For example, some lawyers spend the majority of their time drafting, researching and writing, Scannell says. Others, like criminal defense attorneys, spend significant time in court and meeting with clients.

Because there's a broad range of types of lawyers and practices, law school hopefuls should understand what drives them personally and then determine if there is a practice area that fits their personal values, experts say.

"If your reason to pursue a legal career is not in synch with your personal values, then you have to take a step back and reassess your career goals," Ro Lee, a prelaw adviser at Pitzer College and associate director of career and professional development at Claremont Graduate University in California, wrote in an email. "For example, if you are passionate about assisting underserved communities, you can become a legal advocate, or if you enjoy working with paperwork and not interacting much with others, you can do some document work in mergers and acquisitions."

Those considering law school should have long-term career goals in mind and know whether a law degree is necessary to reach them. J.D. hopefuls should identify specific jobs or areas within the legal profession that interest them and talk with those already working to confirm it's something they want to do and that a law degree is required.

“I think there are a lot of people who go to law school without that specific of an interest, just saying, ‘I’m interested in the law and I’m a good writer,’" says Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law and a lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law in North Carolina. "But I think the best thing you can do is make a list of specific lawyer jobs and try to reach out to those people to talk to them about their day-to-day life and figure out if it’s something you want to do.”

Before applying, it may be beneficial to shadow practicing attorneys or volunteer at a legal clinic or government office. This will not only help applicants determine if law is truly the field they want to pursue, but "gaining field experience before diving into writing a personal statement for law school can be really beneficial," says Kristen Willmott, senior private counselor and graduate school admissions director at Top Tier Admissions.

What Makes a Good Lawyer?

Successful lawyers are passionate and driven about their work, but they're also skilled in several specific areas, experts say. Strong reading comprehension and writing and analytical skills are key, as are the abilities to debate and think critically and creatively.

"A good lawyer has excellent communication skills, which requires strong listening skills and the ability to simplify and explain complex issues," Scannell says. "They will possess integrity and professionalism. They are able to strategize and problem-solve multifaceted issues. They have a strong work ethic and are self-motivated."

Those who don't enjoy reading will likely not cut it as a lawyer, Lee says. "Reading cases, facts, testimonies, applicable laws and reports all require an analytical mind to pick up information that favors your client and case."

Which Law School Is Best for Me?

Many J.D. hopefuls may have their sights set on attending a highly ranked program , but experts say applicants should focus more on finding the right fit for their goals .

That decision may also depend on which schools an applicant can realistically get into based on their academic profile. While law schools consider an applicant’s extracurriculars and “ soft skills ” gained through work or military experience, admissions decisions are largely based on an applicant's undergraduate GPA and their scores on the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT , or the Graduate Record Exam .

Some schools have adopted a test-optional approach. Schools that require or accept scores typically publish on their website the median scores of accepted students.

Law school hopefuls "should have three categories of law schools – our dream schools , realistic admissions and safety schools ," Lee says. "Schools in each of these categories should also be ranked."

In addition to considering which school is the best fit academically, applicants should determine which school is best for them socially and culturally and will provide the best opportunities for launching a legal career, experts say.

"Consider the school's specialty courses, reputation and alumni network," Lee says. "Most applicants put too much emphasis on the ranking of a school without researching on the law school's programs and connections within a certain field or industry."

How Will I Pay for Law School?

In addition to finding the right academic and cultural fit, students should determine which school, if any, fits their budget. Law school can be expensive , from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $200,000 total in some cases.

Students should consider schools where their LSAT score and GPA can help them land scholarship money , experts say. Some programs also offer tuition help through grants to help offset the cost.

“If you’re going somewhere you don’t have scholarship money, generally you’d be taking out loans and that can be something where you limit the options you have after you graduate,” Willinger says. "If you take out loans, generally that means you’re going to go to a bigger law firm to make the money to pay them back, or potentially public interest."

In some cases, students can complete internships or jobs with local law firms, legal clinics or judges that can count as class credit, but it's important to weigh the trade-offs of working on top of attending classes, he says.

When Should I Go to Law School?

Whenever you decide to attend law school, it's best to apply early in the cycle because the rolling admission process of evaluating applications roughly in the order they are received could improve your odds the earlier you apply, experts say.

While some students go straight from an undergraduate degree to law school, that's not always necessary, and some may benefit from a gap between the two for various reasons. Law school hopefuls can use that time to ensure their LSAT or GRE scores align with their target schools' median scores and to bolster their resume, Willmott says.

Some may do that by taking time to work, and it's not always necessary for that to be in the legal field, Willinger says.

"I really think that experience of being out in the real world and working a 9-to-5 job is quite valuable in terms of time management," he says. "Having that experience when you apply to law firms or government jobs and even going into those internships, I think it can give you a leg up to have the experience of working a job for a full year or longer."

Tips to Boost a Law School Application

Tags: law school , law , LSAT , graduate schools , education , students , GRE

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Could Trump go to prison after his guilty verdict in hush money trial?

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Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis

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Reports on the New York federal courts. Previously worked as a correspondent in Venezuela and Argentina.

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What was Trump convicted of? Details on the 34 counts and his guilty verdict

By Stefan Becket

Updated on: June 3, 2024 / 9:27 AM EDT / CBS News

Former President Donald Trump's conviction in New York stemmed from a $130,000 "hush money" payment his attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election. Prosecutors said the deal was meant to keep voters in the dark about Daniels' allegation that she had sex with Trump years earlier, which he denies. 

But the actual charges that Trump faced were far less salacious, and dealt with the comparatively mundane paperwork that was generated when he reimbursed Cohen for the payment. 

Here's what to know about the charges Trump faced:

What was Trump convicted of?

Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records in the first degree, which is a felony in New York. He pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned last year.

In 2017, Cohen and Allen Weisselberg, an executive at the Trump Organization, reached an agreement about how Cohen would be repaid for the $130,000 that he sent to Daniels in exchange for her silence. Weisselberg detailed the calculations in handwritten notes that were shown to the jury at trial. 

Cohen would receive $130,000 for the Daniels payment, plus $50,000 intended for a technology company that did unrelated work for Trump. That amount was doubled to account for taxes that Cohen would have to pay on the income. Weisselberg then tacked on an extra $60,000 as a bonus for Cohen, who was upset that his regular year-end award had been cut. The total worked out to $420,000.

Cohen would be paid in a series of monthly payments of $35,000 over the course of 2017. The first check was for $70,000, covering two months. Cohen sent an invoice to the Trump Organization for each check, portraying the payment as his "retainer." Every time he was paid, a bookkeeper generated a record for the company's files, known as a voucher, with the description "legal expense." The first three payments were made from Trump's trust, while the remaining nine came from his personal account.

Each of the 34 charges against Trump corresponded to a check, invoice and voucher generated to reimburse Cohen. The prosecution laid out the charges in a chart that jurors saw several times during the trial:

Prosecutors said Trump knew the payments were to reimburse Cohen for the Daniels payment, not for his legal expenses.

The jury voted to convict on all 34 counts. As Trump looked on , the court's clerk asked the foreperson of the jury for the verdict.

"How say you to the first count of the indictment, charging Donald J. Trump with the crime of falsifying business records in the first degree, guilty or not guilty?" the clerk asked.

"Guilty," the foreperson responded, repeating the answer 33 more times.

Why were the charges a felony?

Under New York law, falsification of business records is a crime when the records are altered with an intent to defraud. To be charged as a felony, prosecutors must also show that the offender intended to "commit another crime" or "aid or conceal" another crime when falsifying records.

In Trump's case, prosecutors said that other crime was a violation of a New York election law that makes it illegal for "any two or more persons" to "conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means," as Justice Juan Merchan explained in his instructions to the jury.

What exactly those "unlawful means" were in this case was up to the jury to decide. Prosecutors put forth three areas that they could consider: a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws. 

Jurors did not need to agree on what the underlying "unlawful means" were. But they did have to unanimously conclude that Trump caused the business records to be falsified, and that he "did so with intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." 

What was Trump's defense?

Trump's lawyers argued that the payments to Cohen were for his work as Trump's attorney, not reimbursements for the Daniels payment.

The defense argued that the descriptions on the invoices and records were accurate — Cohen held the title "personal attorney to the president" once Trump took office, and was being paid for his legal services under an unwritten retainer agreement. Therefore, their argument went, no business records were falsified.

They also focused much of their firepower on portraying Cohen as a liar , with the goal of discrediting his testimony. Cohen was the only witness who testified that Trump knew about the true purpose of the reimbursements, a crucial pillar of prosecutors' effort to show Trump's intent. 

Ultimately, the jurors rejected the defense's arguments and sided with prosecutors in finding Trump guilty.

When will Trump be sentenced?

Shortly after the verdict was handed down, Merchan, the judge, set Trump's sentencing date for July 11, just days before the start of the Republican National Convention.

Under New York law, each count of falsifying business records in the first degree carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and a $5,000 fine. But Merchan has broad discretion when it comes to imposing a sentence. Most legal observers expect him to punish Trump with little or no time behind bars, based on factors like Trump's status as a first-time offender and his age. Merchan could instead rely on options like probation, home confinement or solely a fine. 

Trump has vowed to appeal the verdict, and any sentence could be delayed until that process plays out.

Stefan Becket is a managing editor of politics for CBSNews.com. Stefan has covered national politics for more than a decade and helps oversee a team covering the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, immigration and federal law enforcement.

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