Legal Research Assignment: Multiple Choice Questions - University

This assignment presents a series of multiple-choice questions designed to assess understanding of legal research methodologies and resources. The questions cover a range of topics, including efficient document retrieval using citations, effective search strategies for locating witnesses in public records, techniques for narrowing search results in legal databases like Lexis Advance, navigating legal codes, utilizing advanced search features, and formulating search queries to find relevant case law. Furthermore, the assignment includes questions on proper citation formats for online resources, procedures for subpoenaing records, identifying relevant legal materials, and locating expert witnesses. The assignment also touches upon e-filing systems, and finding financial information for public companies. The bibliography provides a list of resources used in the assignment.

Running head: MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
Multiple Choice Questions
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

2MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. You want to retrieve a specific case, and have the case name and citation. Which is the
most efficient document retrieval method?
A. Get a Document by Citation.
B. Use ECLIPSE.
C. Run a word search.
D. Use the Search Advisor.
2. Your supervising attorney asked you to locate a witness, Jane Smith. You plan on running
a search in the public records sources. Which of the following would you use?
A. jane and smith; terms and connectors method
B. jane smith; natural language method
C. jane or smith; terms and connectors method
D. jane w/3 smith; terms and connectors method
3. You're assisting an attorney in a case involving a client who suffered a herniated disc in a
construction accident. The attorney wants you to search in the jury verdicts source to learn
more about the settlement value of this case. You ran a search and retrieved more than 100
documents on this issue. What should you do next to help narrow your answer set of
documents?
A. Browse through the 100 documents.
B. Use the ECLIPSE feature.

3MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
C. Run the search in a different source.
D. Use Narrow By
4.You're doing research into a drug possession case for your supervising attorney. On Lexis
Advance, you're looking at 21 U.S.C. § 812, Schedules of controlled substances, and need to
find § 814, Removal of exemption of certain drugs. What would be the easiest way to
navigate to this section of the Code?
A. Pull up the Table of Contents for the Code and click the right link.
B. Click on Get a Document, Citation, and fill in the cite in the text box
C. Click on Search | Federal Legal-U.S. | USCS-Federal Rules Annotated, and fill in the
cite in the text box.
D. Select the title of § 812 and click on More Like Selected Text, then click on Search.
5. You want to run a search on federal and state case law, and restrict your search to retrieve
only cases heard by a specific judge. Which Lexis Advance feature would you use to perform
this task?
A. Advanced Search, segments
B. Short names
C. Long names
D. More Like Selected Text
6. You're formulating a search request and one of your search terms is host. Which of the
following will find variations of the word host?
A. host*

4MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
B. !host
C. host@
D. host!
7. Your supervising attorney has taken on a case involving a woman who was stopped for
speeding by a police officer who, after verifying her driver's license, searched her purse and
found a marijuana cigarette. She was then arrested, and is challenging the validity of the
arrest, claiming her Fourth Amendment rights were violated because she was singled out due
to her race, and there was no reasonable suspicion to justify the search. You're assigned to do
a search on Lexis Advance for cases regarding warrantless drug searches, the legality of
"profiling," and under what circumstances police may search a vehicle or property in it
without the owner's consent. Which of the following searches would be most likely to get
relevant results?
A. drug or racial w/4 profil! /p consent /s search and reason! suspicion
B. drug or racial w/4 profil! and consent w/5 search and reason! suspicion
C. racial profiling /s consent search and reasonable susp!
D. racial profil! and marij! or consent search w/5 reason! Suspicion
8. What site is a good place to go to find court rules?
A. www.cpsc.gov
B. www.access.gpo.gov
C. www.llrx.com
D. pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov

5MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
9. You found a blog post on the Internet and need to provide a citation for a memorandum
you're writing. The blog post is titled "Free Research Resources for Legal Minds" by Dorothy
Secol, on The Paralegal Society, dated March 25, 2013, which you viewed on December 1,
2017. You're unable to locate a printed form of this elsewhere. What's the proper citation
format for this blog post?
A. Dorothy Secol, Free Research Resources for Legal Minds, The Paralegal Society,
[https://theparalegalsociety.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/free-research-resources-for-legal-
minds/]
B. Free Research Resources for Legal Minds (Online 2013)
[https://theparalegalsociety.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/free-research-resources-for-legal-
minds/]
C. Dorothy Secol, Free Research Resources for Legal Minds, The Paralegal Society
Online '13, at https://theparalegalsociety.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/free-research-
resources-for-legal-minds/ (last visited Dec. 1, 2017
D. Dorothy Secol, Free Research Resources for Legal Minds, The Paralegal Society (Online
2013), The Internet
10. Your supervising attorney asked you to determine the procedures for subpoenaing the
telephone records for a company in California. The attorney suggested that you start your
assignment by reviewing secondary materials. What type of specific legal materials would
you review on the Internet?
A. Congressional records
B. Case law
C. Statutes

6MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
D. Practice materials
11. The system for e-filing in the courts is
A. handled uniformly throughout the federal and state court system.
B. always contracted to an independent vendor.
C. handled differently in different courts
D. always handled by each court individually.
12. Your office accepted a new plaintiff's personal injury case in which the client was injured
in a rear-end automobile accident. The attorney wants your help in determining the potential
value of the case. What type of legal materials would you research on the Internet?
A. Law reviews and treatises
B. Practice materials
C. Jury verdicts and settlements
D. Primary materials
13. You're looking for a missing witness in a case and can't locate any information about the
witness using the Internet or Lexis Advance. What's your next step?
A. Tell the supervising attorney you found no results.
B. Search deceased-person records.
C. Search Westlaw.
D. Perform the research again just in case you made a mistake.
14. You need to find the social security number of a person involved in a litigation matter.
What's your research strategy?

7MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
A. Use a search engine.
B. Use Social Security Death Index or a commercial database
C. Use a CD-ROM library.
D. Use a meta index on the Internet.
15. You have the name of a company, and the attorney wants to know if the company is
involved in federal litigation as a plaintiff or defendant. What's your next step?
A. Look in the U.S. Party/Case Index.
B. Go to FindLaw and search each federal court's database
C. Go to state court sites for every state the company does business in.
D. Look in The Virtual Chase.
16. You've been assigned research for a new case. The client was injured in a botched
medical procedure. The attorney is looking for an expert witness who specializes in
surgery. Name one method of finding expert witnesses.
A. Search PACER dial-up service.
B. Search NHTSA.
C. Search jury verdicts and reports in Lexis Advance.
D. Search the National Expert Witness Database
17. You need to find out the financial situation of a public company that a client wants to
sue. What's the most efficient way to find the company's financial information, such as its
balance sheet and cash flow?
A. Go to a financial news site, such as TheStreet.com or Bloomberg.com.

8MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
B. Do a search for the company name on an Internet search engine.
C. Go to the SEC's EDGAR database and download a copy of the latest company
filings
D. Look for news on the company in the financial newspapers.

9MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
Bibliography
Barkan, S.M., Bintliff, B. and Whisner, M., 2015. Fundamentals of legal research.
Osborne, C. and Miller, S., 2018. Curricular Changes in Legal Research Instruction: An
Empirical Study.