A legal research workflow for solo attorneys and small firms

A good research workflow for a small firm is one you can repeat under time pressure: write the question down, find one reliable way into the authority, expand outward through citing references, run everything through a citator, confirm any statute or rule is current, and record what you did in the file. Six steps, every time, whatever tools you use.

Large firms have research departments and librarians to enforce process. Solo attorneys and small firms have the same duty of competence and none of the infrastructure, which is why a written process matters more, not less. This guide sets one out and then covers cost and where AI helps.

Step 1: frame the question

Most bad research starts with a vague question. "Can we get this dismissed" is not researchable. "Does a forum selection clause in a consumer contract of adhesion get enforced under Florida law when the consumer never saw it" is.

Write the question down before you open a search box. Include:

• The jurisdiction and court. Federal or state, which circuit or district, which state's law applies.
• The procedural posture. The standard on a motion to dismiss differs from summary judgment, which differs from trial.
• The specific legal element you need. Not "negligence" but "whether a landowner owes a duty to a trespassing child".
• Facts that could matter. Note the ones that make your case unusual, because those are what later cases will distinguish on.

A well-framed question usually takes ten minutes and saves hours. It also becomes the first line of your research note.

Step 2: find a way in

You need one reliable anchor: a case, statute, rule or secondary source that is clearly on point. From there, everything else is expansion.

Ways to find an anchor, in rough order of preference:

1. A statute or rule. If the question is governed by a statute, start there. The annotations, if you have them, and the cases citing the section will lead you to the case law. Our guide to finding a statute and confirming it is current covers this.
2. A secondary source. A treatise, practice guide, law review note or bar journal article that surveys the area. Even a free research guide from a law school library will often name the leading cases. Secondary sources are the thing free tools lack most, so if your firm pays for one thing, consider making it a practice guide in your main area.
3. A case you already know. A leading case from the jurisdiction, or a case from another jurisdiction you can use to find the local equivalent.
4. A search. Natural-language or keyword search in a case law database. This is the least reliable starting point because search ranks by relevance, not authority, but it works when you have nothing else. Asking Donna at /ask is a version of this: she searches the Law Library and returns cases with citations you can open.

Whatever the anchor, read it in full before going further. The most common research failure is building on a case you skimmed.

Step 3: expand through citing references

Once you have an anchor case, the citing references are the map. Open the citator report and look at:

• Later cases from binding courts that followed it. These are your best authorities.
• Later cases that distinguished it. These tell you the boundaries and often describe facts like yours.
• The cases your anchor relied on. Going one level up sometimes finds the real leading case.
• Recent cases, whatever the treatment. They show where the law is now and often collect the authorities for you.

Do this two or three levels out and you will have the field. Keep a running list of every case with a one-line note on what it holds and how it relates to your question. Stop when new searches return cases you already have.

Step 4: check the citator

Every case that will appear in the filing gets run through a citator and every negative treatment gets read. Not summarised. Read.

If you use Westlaw or Lexis, this is KeyCite or Shepard's. If you do not, the Frix Law Library shows red and yellow flags and the sentence each citing case used, and CourtListener and Google Scholar list citing opinions. Free citators are automated, so read more carefully, not less. The full method is in how to check whether a case is still good law.

This step also catches the fabricated-citation problem if any AI tool touched the research. A case that does not exist will not have a citator entry, and a real case attached to a fake holding will not say what the tool said it did when you open it. See how to verify AI-generated citations.

Step 5: confirm statutes and rules are current

If any statute, regulation or court rule bears on the question, confirm you are reading the version in force on the relevant date. This is a separate check from the case citator, which catches superseding legislation inconsistently.

For federal statutes, use uscode.house.gov and note the currency date. For federal regulations, use eCFR. For state law, use the legislature's official site and check the effective date and any pending amendments. For court rules, check the court's website, because local rules and individual practices change more often than anyone expects.

Step 6: document it

Write a short research note into the client file. It does not have to be a formal memo. It needs:

• The question as you framed it in step 1.
• The date and the sources you searched.
• The authorities you found, with a line on each and the citator result.
• Any negative treatment you reviewed and why it does not affect your point.
• Anything you did not resolve.

This is the step small firms skip most and regret most. Six months later, when the same issue comes up in a different matter, or when opposing counsel challenges a citation, the note is the difference between an hour and a day.

Keeping costs down

Research cost in a small firm is mostly time and subscriptions. Some ways to manage both:

• Use free primary sources by default. Case law, statutes and regulations are public and the free tools are good. Our roundup of free legal research tools compares them.
• Pay for what free tools lack. Usually that is a practice guide or treatise in your main area, and possibly an editorial citator for high-stakes matters. Decide deliberately rather than buying the whole bundle.
• Time-box the search. Set a limit before you start. If you have not found an anchor in the time, change approach: a secondary source, a colleague, a bar listserv.
• Reuse. The research note from step 6 is an asset. A firm that files the same motion in the same court every month should have a standing research file for it, updated each time, not a fresh search.
• Bill honestly. Research that a client is paying for should be research on their question, not general education in the area. If you are learning the area, that is overhead.

Where AI fits and where it does not

AI research tools are useful at specific points in this workflow and dangerous at others.

Useful:

• Step 1, as a sounding board for framing the question and spotting elements you have not considered.
• Step 2, for finding an anchor quickly when you have nothing else, provided the tool searches a real corpus and shows sources.
• Step 3, for summarising long opinions so you can decide which to read in full.
• After step 6, for drafting from authorities you have already verified.

Not a substitute for:

• Reading the cases. A summary tells you what the tool thinks the case says.
• The citator check. Ask a general chatbot whether a case is good law and it will answer confidently from nothing.
• Judgment about which authority a particular judge will find persuasive.

The distinction that matters is whether the tool retrieves from a real corpus and shows you the source, or generates from memory. A tool that shows numbered citations you can click and read is a research assistant. One that does not is a writing assistant, and you should treat its legal claims accordingly. The Frix vs ChatGPT page sets out this distinction in detail.

How to do this in Frix

Frix is designed around the steps above. Donna searches the Law Library when you ask a legal question and answers with numbered citations that open the source at the cited passage. She runs the citator on the cases she cites and shows the flags. The library is free, needs no account, and covers about 10.8 million opinions and 2.9 million statute and regulation sections, updated daily from public sources. Three questions at /ask are free as a guest.

For firms on a paid plan, Donna also reads the matter file, so the research note from step 6 can live next to the pleadings, and drafts in Word from the authorities you have verified. Frix does not train models on customer data.

The limits: the citator is automated, state administrative codes cover 16 states, some older opinions are scans without text, and nothing on the site is legal advice. Read the cases.