A more thorough explanation:

Legal research is the process of finding "authority" that can help solve a legal problem. This authority can be primary or secondary. Primary authority includes rules of law that are binding on courts, government, and individuals, such as statutes, regulations, court orders, and court decisions. Secondary authority includes commentaries on the law that do not have a binding effect but help explain what the law is or should be.

• Statutes
• Regulations
• Court orders
• Court decisions
• Legal encyclopedias
• Treatises
• American Law Reports (ALR)
• Law reviews
• Legal periodical articles
• Restatements

For example, if a lawyer needs to find out what the law says about a particular issue, they might start by looking at the relevant statutes and regulations. They might also consult legal encyclopedias, treatises, and ALR to get a better understanding of the law. Law reviews and legal periodical articles can provide interpretation of the law as well as detailed articles on particular legal topics. Restatements provide detailed summaries of what the law generally is or what the restatement writers believe the law should be.

Finding tools are resources that help researchers find and interpret legal authority. Some examples of finding tools include:

• Index to Legal Periodicals
• Case reporters
• Case digests
• Popular name tables
• Conversion tables
• Shepard's Citations
• LEXIS and WESTLAW

For example, case reporters contain the decisions in cases that have been deemed important enough to publish. Case digests enable a researcher to look up a particular area of the law and find a list of case decisions that are "reported" in relevant case reporters. Popular name tables can provide a quick reference to where a law can be found in the statute compilation. Conversion tables allow one to link a statute to the bill from which it developed and the commentary surrounding its approval. Shepard's Citations provides references to when cases and law review articles were cited by another source.

Computer databanks have also provided the legal profession with quick and efficient tools to do research. LEXIS and WESTLAW, two prominent legal search engines, provide databases that have case reporters, statutes, legal periodicals, law reviews, and various secondary authorities. State and specialty law collections pulling together diverse types of authority are now appearing on CD-ROM and the Internet.