Law students

Legal research for law students — learn the habit before you need it

Somebody will ask you, in your first month in a chamber, whether the case you just handed over is still good law. If your honest answer is that you do not know how to find out, that is not a gap in your intelligence. It is a gap in what an Indian law degree teaches. Close it now, while the stakes are a moot.

The short answer

Lawgger answers a research question over 2.07 crore Indian judgments. Each answer opens the judgment at the paragraph relied on and tells you whether that authority is still good law — the two habits moot court and chamber work will demand of you. It is a paid product, and it starts with a 14-day free trial that does not ask for a card.

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Three skills

What nobody quite gets around to teaching you

These are not advanced techniques. They are the floor, and a senior will assume you already stand on it.

Skill one

Reading a citation

Indian citations come in layers. Reporter citations — AIR, SCC and others — identify the year, the volume, the reporter and the page at which the judgment begins, which is why the same judgment carries several of them at once. Neutral citations, by contrast, are assigned by the court itself and are tied to no publisher's pagination, which is why courts increasingly prefer them. You should be able to look at a string of letters and numbers and say which court decided it, roughly when, and where the text can be found. When a senior gives you a citation and no name, that is all you are getting. Terms you are unsure of are in the glossary.

Skill two

Checking whether a case survives

A judgment is not a fixed object. Later benches do things to it. It can be followed, applied on all fours. It can be distinguished, which leaves it standing but out of your way. It can be doubted, or referred to a larger bench, which is a warning that it may not survive. It can be held per incuriam, decided in ignorance of a binding statute or precedent. Or it can be expressly overruled, and a coordinate bench cannot do that. Reading only the judgment tells you none of this; reading its subsequent treatment does. See good-law checking.

Skill three

Pin-citing, not citing

Citing a whole judgment says you found a case. A pin cite — the paragraph the proposition actually comes from — says you read it, and invites the bench to check you in thirty seconds. Indian judgments are paragraph-numbered precisely so this is possible. The discipline also protects you: the moment you have to name a paragraph, you discover whether the judgment says what you assumed it said, or whether you were relying on somebody's summary of somebody's headnote. Every answer in Lawgger arrives pinned to the page for this reason. See how research works.

Moot court

A research method for a proposition

Five steps, in order. Most memorials fail somewhere between step three and step five.

Frame the issue as a proposition

Not "Article 21 and privacy" — that is a topic, and topics generate reading rather than authority. Write one sentence with a subject, a legal test and a consequence, in the words you would use standing up. Everything after this step is judged against that sentence.

Find the leading authority

Search the proposition, not keywords. Then ask which is the highest court that has decided it, and on how large a bench. A convenient recent two-judge judgment is not a substitute for the Constitution Bench it is applying, and a moot bench will ask you why you cited the smaller one.

Trace subsequent treatment

Follow the judgment forward. Who has applied it, who has distinguished it and on what facts, has any bench doubted it or referred it upward. Often the treatment is the argument: the case your opponent will cite is alive, but only on facts that are not these.

Build the Table of Authorities with pin cites

Every case, every statute, and against each the paragraph you actually rely on. Do this while you are researching, not the night before submission, because reconstructing paragraph numbers from memory is where fabricated citations come from.

Check every verdict before the memorial goes in

Paste the finished brief into Authority Check. You get the Table of Authorities back with a verdict against each entry — still good law, or overruled. One overruled authority in a memorial costs more marks than three weak arguments.

Statute

The section number in your textbook is not the one you will file under

You are studying in the middle of the largest renumbering of Indian criminal law in living memory. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam have replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act. The offences have not vanished, but the numbers have moved.

This creates a specific problem for a student, and it is not a problem your seniors had. Every judgment delivered before the change speaks in the old numbering, and so does most of the commentary you are reading. The authority is still good; the label is not the one on the charge sheet. So you will constantly be translating between the section a judgment discusses and the section a matter is registered under, in both directions, and you will need to do it without losing the reasoning in the middle.

Do that translation explicitly rather than in your head, and say in your memorial which numbering you are using. The mapping between the old and new provisions is set out on IPC to BNS. Lawgger holds 1,607 central and state acts across all 37 jurisdictions, with judgments linked to the sections they turn on, so the old judgment and the new section can sit on the same screen.

Honestly

What none of this replaces

No product is a substitute for your library. Your university's subscribed databases, its commentaries and its bound reporters go deeper than anything you are likely to buy for yourself, and the librarian who knows how to use them is the most underused resource on campus. Ask what your institution already holds before you spend on a research tool of your own. Indian Kanoon is free and gives you full text of an enormous number of judgments — use it, and read our comparison for what it does and does not tell you about whether a case still stands.

One thing you should not do is take a general-purpose chatbot's word for a citation. Made-up case names and made-up paragraph numbers have already embarrassed lawyers in real courtrooms in several countries, and a moot bench will catch it faster than a judge will. Read why AI invents citations before you rely on one, and the comparison for Indian legal work. Lawgger is a paid product with a 14-day free trial and no card at the start; the terms are on pricing.

Internship

What a senior actually asks for

When a senior says "see if there is something on this", they are not asking for a note. They are asking for three things, and almost every intern delivers only the first.

One: the pin cite. Name, court, year, and the paragraph. Not a link to a search result, not "there is a Supreme Court case on this". Two: the verdict. Whether the authority is still good law, and if it has been distinguished, on what facts. Say so unprompted, because if you do not, the senior will find out in court. Three: the ratio in one line. What the case decides, in the sentence you would say if interrupted after four words.

Hand it back in that order, in a WhatsApp message if that is how the chamber works, and you will be given real work by the second week. Add a fourth line if the answer is genuinely unhelpful: say so plainly. An intern who reports that the point is against us is worth more than one who found something that half-fits. This is also, exactly, the shape in which Lawgger returns an answer — proposition, pin cite, verdict — which is not a coincidence. It is the shape the work takes.

Questions

Student questions

Indian Kanoon remains free for full-text judgments, and your university library and its subscribed databases stay the deepest resource available to you. Lawgger is a paid product, but every plan starts with a 14-day free trial of the full product and no card is required to begin.

Frame the point as a proposition, find the leading judgment of the highest court that has decided it, trace how later benches treated it, note the exact paragraph you rely on, and confirm the authority is still good law before you cite it. Statute first, then authority on the statute, then treatment of that authority.

Look at how later and higher benches have treated it. A judgment can be followed, distinguished, doubted, referred to a larger bench, held per incuriam, or expressly overruled, and a coordinate bench cannot overrule another. Lawgger runs that check on every authority in an answer and marks it still good law or overruled. See good-law checking.

A pin cite points to the exact paragraph or page a proposition comes from, not merely to the judgment. Citing a whole judgment tells a bench you found a case; a pin cite tells the bench where to look and invites verification. Indian judgments are numbered by paragraph, which makes pin-citing straightforward.

It is the list at the front of a memorial or brief of every case, statute and other source relied on, usually with the paragraph where each is used. In Lawgger, Authority Check builds one from a pasted brief and adds a still-good-law or overruled verdict against each entry.

Yes, and the good-law verdict is the part that matters for a moot, because losing points to an overruled authority is the most avoidable mistake in a memorial. Authority Check will also build a Table of Authorities from a pasted memorial and mark each entry still good law or overruled.

There is no separate student price. Lawgger is Rs 1,999 a month or Rs 19,999 a year, the same figure for everybody, and it begins with a 14-day free trial of the full product that does not ask for a card. Check what your university library and your bar association already subscribe to before you pay for anything yourself.

No. The 14-day trial does not ask for a card. Sign in and you have the full product for a fortnight, and nothing you search is used as AI training data, whether you are paying or not.

Where to go from here

Good-law checking Legal glossary IPC to BNS Legal research Why AI invents citations Indian Kanoon compared ChatGPT for lawyers Vakalatnama format When you go solo For advocates (hub) Supreme Court of India Pricing

Fourteen days, and the habit that lasts

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