As a litigator, you know that legal research is both a science and an art. The strength of any case depends on what you know — and your ability to find out what you don't know. When building a client's case, the ability to quickly and effectively comb through legal documents and other information can mean the difference between winning and losing in court.

Although online services, such as LexisNexis, have undoubtedly eased the process of legal research over the past several years, reliable research is still time consuming. Fortunately, the Research task pane feature in Microsoft Office 2003 programs further simplifies this process. Using the Research task pane, you can search online information services, as well as documents stored on your firm's intranet or Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 site, and easily insert key portions of your results into your e-mail messages, case notes, briefs, or memos — without ever leaving your Office program.

For example, if you are working on a legal memo in Microsoft Office Word 2003 and require more information, simply type a query into the adjoining Research task pane and run it through LexisNexis. You can read through search results and copy holdings, dicta, and cites directly into your document. This enables you to research and write at the same time.

The following tools and information can teach you how to render your research more efficiently.

• More effective legal research with Office 2003 (Article)
  Learn how you can quickly search for information in LexisNexis, as well as in-house briefs and memos, while composing a Word 2003 document or Outlook 2003 e-mail message.
• See what you can do with the Research service (Training)
  Follow this training to learn how to use the Research task pane.
• Add or change research services (Article)
  Add LexisNexis and other third-party premium services to your Research task pane.
• Research search tips (Article)
  Review these tips about how to quickly look up information through the Research task pane.
• Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (Article)
  Learn how using a SharePoint site can help your entire firm store and share documents, and more.