Pragmatic psychology' is a knowledge model and research method in forensic and all other areas of applied psychology. It focuses on contextualized knowledge about particular individuals, groups, organizations and communities in specific situations, sensitive to the complexities and ambiguities of the real world. Applying pragmatic psychology to the psycholegal domain leads to the 'Psycholegal Lexis Proposal', a call for developing a peer-reviewed, case archive system in forensic psychology that parallels the Lexis or similar computerized database systems so central to legal research and legal reasoning throughout much of the world. In line with the positivist model and tradition, quantitative, population-based measures are employed to provide a normative framework as one way of understanding the individual case; there is a major investment in ensuring methodological rigour in how a case is described and interpreted, including both quantitative and qualitative data; and systematic, behaviourally specific observation is emphasized.