Unlike most legal research, which is grounded in legislation or case law, drafting policy proposals often involves issues that have not been legislated or regulated yet. The goal in public policy research is to bring together the current knowledge on an issue to propose a legislative or regulatory solution or improve existing law. That current knowledge is spread across a variety of sources--academic journals, popular media, polls, census data, organizational reports, government documents, and more--and therefore involves a different approach to research than most lawyers are familiar with. The purpose of this research guide is to help lawyers and law students to gather data from a variety of sources to support public policy arguments and proposals.
Grey paper/Grey Literature: a catch-all term for unpublished--or informally published--literature. It can include internal reports, manuals, dissertations/theses, patents, or working papers. Locating grey literature presents its own series of challenges, much like trying to locate unpublished cases or very recent slip opinions once proved difficult before the internet.
Think Tank: an organization that consists of a group of people who think of new ideas on a particular subject or who give advice about what should be done