What does legal research involve?

Legal research primarily involves identifying and retrieving information that is essential for legal decision-making. This includes locating relevant statutes, case law, regulations, and secondary sources such as legal articles and treatises that inform the legal issues at hand. The goal of legal research is to gather the necessary data that allows attorneys or legal professionals to support their arguments, understand the applicable law, and effectively represent their clients.

The other choices, while related to legal practice, do not accurately capture the essence of legal research. Collecting witness statements is part of trial preparation rather than research, drafting legal complaints and summons pertains to the actual formation of legal documents rather than the research process, and citing case law and statutes is a step that may come after the research has been conducted, as it involves applying the realized legal principles to specific cases or claims. Thus, option B comprehensively encapsulates the critical function of legal research in the legal field.