Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) in terms of a job, a great deal of walking; also in fig. use as a huge amount of research.

1891		DN I 207: Reporters characterize a task in which there is more running than writing by the expressive compound leg-work [DA].
1932		E.S. Gardner ‘Bird in the Hand’ in Goulart (1967) 273: You leave the thinkin’ to me. You do the leg work.
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 42: Information that made locating the missing person mostly a matter of leg work.
1957		R. Prather Always Leave ’Em Dying 19: My search for Felicity would boil down to tedious legwork.
1964		L. Hansberry Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window in Three Negro Plays (1969 I i: All I’m asking from you is a little legwork.
1985		J. Sherwood Botanist at Bay 90: We could get all the leg-work done for us.
1999		Indep. Rev. 25 June 6: He [...] by nifty legwork, revealed the full extent to which Greene was swindled.

2. intercourse between the thighs or the buttocks (without penetration of the anus).

1941		G. Legman ‘Lang. of Homosexuality’ Appendix VII in Henry Sex Variants.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 27: legwork (n.): Coitus of a man with a boy, either intercrural (between the legs) or intergluteal (between the buttocks). (Slang.).
1997		Solar Project ‘Zeitgest’ 🎵 on ...in Time [album] Group grope, bunch punch / Gang bang, daisy chain / Leg work, Swedish culture, S & M / We are shagging like wild rattlesnakes / We bang like the shithouse door in a gale.