Abstract
Legal research methodology is not included in the cluster of research and design courses offered to undergraduate and graduate students in education by traditional departments of research and foundations, so it becomes the responsibility of education law faculty to instruct students in legal methodology. This narrow corridor of opportunity for learning how to conduct legal research is sometimes and unnecessarily disconcerting to students because they fear this line of inquiry is too obscure. Our purpose here is three-fold: (a) to assert the critical role legal research plays in education policy and practice and (b) to explain the general principles and applications of traditional legal research to practitioners, graduate students, and education researchers who are unfamiliar with it, and (c) to describe some examples that illustrate the usefulness of legal research to practitioners and graduate students in educational leadership. (Contains 2 footnotes.)