how to do secondary research lawyer

How to do legal research in law?

How to do legal research 1 Gather critical information about your legal issue. ... 2 Establish your legal issue and your goal. ... 3 Learn and understand the precedent in your jurisdiction. ... 4 Determine the type of legal sources you need. ... 5 Begin your legal research with secondary sources. ... 6 Check that you’re using “good” law. ...

Do you need to know how to do secondary research?

If nothing else, secondary research avoids the all-so-tiring efforts usually involved with primary research. Like recruiting your participants, choosing and preparing your measures, and spending days (or months) collecting your data. That said, you do still need to know how to do secondary research.

What are the best secondary sources for legal research?

Law review or journal articles are another great secondary source for legal research, valuable for the depth in which they analyze and critique legal topics, as well as their extensive references to other sources, including primary sources.

Where do you typically start your primary law research?

We typically start primary law research here. If there is a controlling statute, cases we look for later will be interpreting that law. Also, you can find cases related to the statutory section that interests you quickly and easily, if you use an annotated statute. Annotated codes are a great place to start your research.

What are the 5 secondary sources of law?

There are five major types of secondary sources:Dictionaries and Encyclopedias.American Law Reports (ALR)Treatises.Law Review Articles.Restatements.

When might a secondary source of law become important to the work of a legal researcher?

6.2. When researching an unfamiliar area of law or jurisdiction, a secondary source will give the researcher a quick overview of the state of the law in a specific legal area or in a specific jurisdiction.

When would you use a secondary source in a legal argument?

You may be wondering why you would use Secondary Sources in legal research. Primary sources (such as cases, statutes, and regulations) have binding authority, whereas secondary sources do not; instead, secondary sources have persuasive authority, and can be used to support your legal argument.

What is an example of a secondary source law?

Examples of secondary sources include: Legal Dictionaries. Legal Encyclopedias. American Law Reports.

What is meant by black letter law?

Blackletter law is free from doubt and generally well-known. It also means well-established case law and refers to the basic key components of a subject in the law. Essentially, it refers to legal concepts that are ancient, important, and indisputable.

What are the 2 functions of secondary sources in legal research?

Secondary sources are books and other sources that assist the researcher in first, explaining and understanding the law and second, locating the law.

Are court decisions secondary sources?

Primary legal sources are the actual law in the form of constitutions, court cases, statutes, and administrative rules and regulations. Secondary legal sources may restate the law, but they also discuss, analyze, describe, explain, or critique it as well.

Which sources of law is a secondary source of law?

These can be divided between primary sources (Law Reports and Legislation), and secondary sources (Commentaries, Textbooks and Journals).

Is case law a secondary source?

Legislation and case law is a primary source of information on the law. A secondary source can be, among other things textbooks, commentaries, or academic articles.

What are 3 secondary sources?

Secondary sourcesjournal articles that comment on or analyse research.textbooks.dictionaries and encyclopaedias.books that interpret, analyse.political commentary.biographies.dissertations.newspaper editorial/opinion pieces.More items...

Where can I find legal research materials?

A Law library provides a good compilation of legal resources. A researcher may start his/her research through browsing Legal Articles, Books Treatise, and Monographs. At the primary level library professionals help the researcher to provide articles and books available with in the library related to subject area.

What are the types of legal research?

Different Types of Legal Research1) Descriptive Legal Research. ... 2) Quantitative research. ... 3) Qualitative Legal Research. ... 4) Analytical Legal Research. ... 5) Applied Legal Research. ... 6) Pure Legal Research. ... 7) Conceptual Legal Research. ... 8) Empirical Legal Research.More items...

What are the advantages of secondary research?

One of the most obvious advantages is that, compared to primary research, secondary research is inexpensive. Primary research usually requires spending a lot of money. For instance, members of the research team should be paid salaries. There are often travel and transportation costs.

What is the difference between secondary research and real time research?

In contrast, secondary research involves data that has been collected by somebody else previously.

Why is my research question different?

Your research question is different, because, although you are seeking to do the same investigation, you wish to do so by using a quantitative methodology. Importantly, in all three examples, you conclude that secondary data may in fact answer your research question.

Why is secondary data inappropriate?

This is simply because you have not collected the data yourself. When you collect your data personally, you do so with a specific research question in mind.

Why is secondary data collected?

However, secondary data was always collected for the purposes of fulfilling other researchers’ goals and objectives. Thus, although secondary data may provide you with a large scope of professionally collected data, this data is unlikely to be fully appropriate to your own research question.

What happens if original researchers do not establish reliability and validity?

But if the original researchers did not establish the reliability and validity of their data, this may limit its reliability and validity for your research as well. To establish reliability and validity, you are usually advised to critically evaluate how the data was gathered, analysed, and presented.

How does research begin?

As we mentioned above, most research begins by specifying what is already known on the topic and what knowledge seems to be missing. This process involves considering the kind of data previously collected on the topic.

What is an ALR article?

ALR articles, called annotations, provide background, analysis, and citations to relevant cases, statutes, law review articles, and other annotations.

What is logging research?

Logging your research will ensure that you do not miss sources and can explain your research strategy, which you may be asked to do. Researchers can keep logs on paper, in folders on Westlaw or Lexis, or in another online citation management platform. If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.

What is legal question?

Understanding the Legal Questions. A legal question often originates in the form of a problem or a story about a series of events. In law school, these appear as fact patterns. In practice, this may come in the form of an assignment from a manager or an interview with a potential client. Start by doing the following:

What is regulation in law?

Regulations are rules made by executive departments and agencies. Not every legal question will require you to search regulations, but many areas of law are affected by regulations, so make sure not to skip this step in the research process if they are relevant to your question.

Why do lawyers need legal research?

Alternatively, lawyers may need legal research to simply provide clients with accurate legal guidance. And in the case of law students, they often use legal research to complete memos and briefs for class. But these are just a few of the situations in which legal research is necessary.

What is the purpose of legal research?

In most instances, the purpose of legal research is to find support for a specific legal issue or decision. For example, attorneys must conduct legal research if they need court opinions (that is, case law) to back up a legal argument they are making in a motion or brief filed with the court. Alternatively, lawyers may need legal research ...

What do you need to know before you start looking for a law?

Before you start looking for laws and court opinions, you first need to define the scope of your legal research project. There are several key questions you can use to help do this.

Why do we need secondary sources?

Because secondary sources provide you with a thorough overview of legal topics, meaning you don't have to start your research from scratch. After secondary sources, you can move on to primary sources of law.

What are the different types of primary law?

Some of the more important types of primary law include: Case law, which are court opinions/decisions issued by federal or state courts. Statutes, including legislation passed by both the U.S. Congress and state lawmakers. Regulations, including those issued by either federal or state agencies.

Is legal research linear?

Keep in mind, though, legal research isn't always a linear process. You may start out going from source to source as outlined above, and then find yourself needing to go back to secondary sources once you have a better grasp of the legal issue.

Can you be discouraged from doing legal research?

So, if you are just beginning, don't get discouraged if you find legal research difficult — almost everyone does at first. With enough time, patience, and dedication, you can master the art of legal research.

What are the sources of secondary research?

The following sources can assist researchers in doing secondary research: Academic peer-reviewed journals – These often include original research undertaken by authors or researchers themselves.

What are the two forms of research?

Despite the differences between these methods, such can be classified into one of two forms: primary research or secondary research . These two forms of research help researchers achieve different objectives, but both can prove to be helpful in ensuring that a study is well-researched.

What is a bias in a survey?

Biased methodology or sampling. If a survey or interview is based on biased methodology, the results will be biased as well. A common type is the so-called ‘response bias, which occurs when participants answer survey or interview questions systematically while in a certain perspective (Wilson & Joye, 2019).

What is primary research?

Primary research refers to research that has involved the collection of original data specific to a particular research project (Gratton & Jones, 2010). When doing primary research, the researcher gathers information first-hand rather than relying on available information in databases and other publications.

What do sociologists do?

Sociologists, on the other hand, use surveys and interviews to gather information from people and draw conclusions on society and culture. Historians study archived texts and artifacts from the relevant time period and make interpretations ...

Is primary research more expensive than secondary research?

Additionally, primary research is more expensive compared to secondary research. Fortunately, technology helps ease the burden of doing original research today.

Can a researcher use both primary and secondary research?

A researcher can choose to use either or both primary or secondary research methods, depending on their objectives. For instance, primary research is ideal if a researcher seeks to make new discoveries or explore new aspects of their field of study.

What is legal research?

Legal research includes various processes ranging from information gathering to analyzing the facts of a problem and communicating the investigation results. Meaning of Legal Research Research implies scientific and purposive investigation or inquiry of a problem or issue of any discipline.

What is legal research analysis?

As essential steps of methodology, the legal research analysis of the facts evaluates what legal concepts may be relevant, finds primary and secondary sources, synthesizes the relevant principles, and apply them to the research problem. R esearch is an intellectual exercise requiring endurance and patience.

What is qualitative research?

Qualitative research is concerned with explanation, interpretation, and understanding of phenomena or issues, or things. It is concerned with the subjective assessment of the social or legal problem, situation, and attitude. It relies primarily on human perception and understanding.

Why do researchers use statistical methods?

Because, in quantitative research, researchers use an array of statistical methods and generalizations to determine the meaning of data. It has been the dominant strategy for conducting socio-legal research. Quantitative methods often test or verify the existing theories or hypotheses.

What is legal research methodology?

Legal research methodology is simply a way of addressing and exploring unsettled legal questions or issues. Legal research methodologies are techniques by which one acquires legally relevant information, analyzes, interprets and applies them to resolving issues at hand and presenting the findings.

Why is legal research creative?

Legal research is creative because it entraps interpret theories, concepts, rules concepts, or rules, creates new knowledge, or enriches existing knowledge. Legal research is also normative as it aims to set out the norms that apply in a particular legal system.

What is the statistical method?

It consists of the counting of how frequently things happen. It applies to phenomena that can be expressed in terms of quantity. It is also known as the statistical method.

What is secondary research?

Secondary research or desk research is a researchmethod that involves using already existing data. Existing data is summarized and collated to increase the overall effectiveness of research. Secondary research includes research material published in research reports and similar documents. These documents can be made available by public libraries, ...

What are some examples of secondary research methods?

Following are popularly used secondary research methods and examples: 1. Data available on the internet: One of the most popular ways of collecting secondary data is using the internet. Data is readily available on the internet and can be downloaded at the click of a button. This data is practically free of cost or one may have to pay ...

Why is secondary research so popular?

Secondary research is cost effective and that’s one of the reasons that makes it a popular choice among a lot of businesses and organizations. Not every organization is able to pay huge sum of money to conduct researchand gather data.

Why is secondary research faster to conduct?

4. Secondary research is quicker to conduct because of availability of data. It can be completed within a few weeks depending on the objective of businesses or scale of data needed.

Why is primary research important?

It aims at gaining a broader understanding of subject matter. Primary research is an expensive process and consumes a lot of time to collect and analyze data. Secondary research is a quick process as data is already available. Researcher should know where to explore to get most appropriate data.

Is secondary research more cost effective than primary research?

Secondary research is much more cost-effective than primary research, as it makes use of already existing data, unlike primary research where data is collected first hand by organizations or businesses or they can employ a third party to collect data on their behalf.

Is secondary research fast or easy?

Researcher is deeply involved in research to collect data in primary research. As opposed to primary research, secondary research is fast and easy. It aims at gaining a broader understanding of subject matter.

What is secondary legal source?

Overview of Secondary Legal Sources. Secondary sources provide commentary and background information on the law and can point you towards useful primary sources. However, they are not actual law. Unlike primary legal sources, secondary sources are generally not binding on courts (for an exception see Restatements, below).

Why are legal dictionaries useful?

Legal dictionaries are useful because the legal definition of a term will often differ from the non-legal definition of a term. During the research process, look up terms you encounter to verify that your interpretation of the word is correct.

What is an ALR annotation?

Remember that the ALR annotations are simply compilations of references and summaries of materials.

What is an annotated ALR?

American Law Reports (ALRs) contain articles, called "annotations,"* which provide in-depth information about the case law (and statutes when relevant) related to a particular topic across multiple jurisdictions (both state and federal). ( Note: the word " annotation" as used in the ALR is used in an entirely different sense from the "annotations" you will see in annotated, statutory codes.)

What are the different types of legal periodicals?

There are 5 general forms of legal periodicals: 1. Law reviews and law journals: These titles are generally published by law schools and other scholarly organizations.

Is it a good idea to use secondary sources?

It is a good idea to begin your research with secondary sources, especially if you are researching a topic you do not know well. Since secondary sources use primary sources as the basis for their discussion, looking at the primary sources referenced in a secondary source (cases, statutes, regulations, etc.) will provide you with an excellent basis ...

Is Illinois law practice oriented?

Illinois Jurisprudence (Ill. Jur.) is published by LexisNexis and is more practice-oriented than Illinois Law and Practice. The Law Library continues to update this title in print (KFI 1265 .L38 1992, Illinois Collection). It is also available on Lexis Advance and in the Lexis Nexis Digital Library.

Overview

Legal materials can fall into two different categories: (1) Primary and (2) Secondary. Secondary sources are about the law. They explain, analyze, interpret, discuss, and cite to primary sources. Examples of secondary sources include:

Research Process Flowchart

Remember that research is a process. If you do not know much about a legal subject, the flow chart below is a helpful process to follow. Your research strategy will change depending on what you know, the resources to which you have access, your budget, your time, and what you discover as you research.

CALI Lesson on Secondary Sources

Available to Law Students only (see a reference librarian if you do not have a CALI activation code).

Why do corporate lawyers conduct legal research?

Similarly, a corporate lawyer may conduct legal research in order to determine whether a proposed new policy would expose the company to liability.

What is legal research?

Legal research is generally the process of finding an answer to a legal question or checking for legal precedent that can be cited in a brief or at trial. Sometimes, legal research can help determine whether a legal issue is a "case of first impression" that is unregulated or lacks legal precedent. Virtually every lawsuit, appeal, criminal case, ...

What is legal information?

Virtually every lawsuit, appeal, criminal case, and legal process in general requires some amount of legal research. Legal information is organized into two general categories: Primary Law: Binding law that is codified in statutes, regulations, and caselaw. Secondary Sources: Not legally binding, this type of information explains primary law ...

Do judges write opinions?

Judges often write opinions that aren't exactly easy for non-lawyers to follow. Lawmakers do the same with statutes. If you're researching a legal topic and you've hit a wall, it may be in your best interests to speak with an attorney.