in the moderate Aristotelian city

If your characters had their formative teenage years during the 80s or later, and they are music fans, and they grew up in the US or UK the Now! That's What I Call Music series is a really excellent resource for finding out what kind of music they might have enjoyed as a youngster. All the track listings for both series (the US and UK versions) are on Wikipedia, and so far I haven't had trouble finding any of the songs on Youtube.

I'm currently using this to do some deep background on my current characters, whose teen years were in the late 90s/early 00s. (Yes, I was a teenager myself in 1999. My memory is terrible, and actually hearing the tracks helps.)

So I'm starting to work seriously on a couple of original fic ideas. One more seriously than the other, simply because it's better developed. This is all a bit tentative and scary for me, and I'm worried about all kinds of things. One of them is how much research to do before I start writing. Everyone, but everyone has different advice on this, and the only thing I can find that might be correct is "whatever works best for me". So I'm in the process of working out what that is. I'm not really desperate for advice on how to work that out, I'll get there.

One of the other things I'm worried about though, is where to get started with the things I do know that I need to research. Like finding out what kind of stuff a history nerd would do while on vacation in New York City. Or like finding out what a corporate solictor's day-to-day work is like. I have no idea.

I did go to university, and I love to read, and I love to find new ideas, but I never have any idea where to start with research topics.

Any generic writerly research tips would be greatly appreciated!

Okay, guys, I'm looking for anyone and everyone who might know something about the US criminal justice system (California in particular).

Specifically, I'm writing something set in an LA district attorney's office and need some information about at what point they get information, what they do with it, etc. I'm Googling, but any knowledge from people's brains would also be much appreciated!

Help?

Thanks!