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Legal Research Assignment

The document discusses five principles for effective legal research: 1. Adopt a systematic approach by planning carefully, doing background reading to identify relevant areas of law, and narrowing your focus with key search terms. 2. Know where to find primary and secondary legal sources, both online and in hard copy, and understand the research tools used. 3. Access current, authoritative, and relevant information, being efficient but thorough in your research. 4. Actively and efficiently read the information found, achieving understanding without wasting time. 5. Apply your research findings through problem solving, academic writing, and proper referencing of sources.

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Charlene Mae Delos Santos
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82 views3 pages

Legal Research Assignment

The document discusses five principles for effective legal research: 1. Adopt a systematic approach by planning carefully, doing background reading to identify relevant areas of law, and narrowing your focus with key search terms. 2. Know where to find primary and secondary legal sources, both online and in hard copy, and understand the research tools used. 3. Access current, authoritative, and relevant information, being efficient but thorough in your research. 4. Actively and efficiently read the information found, achieving understanding without wasting time. 5. Apply your research findings through problem solving, academic writing, and proper referencing of sources.

Uploaded by

Charlene Mae Delos Santos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

In law school, acquiring practical experience and legal expertise can be a good

foundation in conducting legal research. Doing some background reading of a

particular area of the research will likely help the researcher to know the relevant

law in depth. In order to undertake effective background reading, the researcher

must first identify the broad areas of law relevant to the research task. This will

assist researcher to work out the best way to conduct further legal research to

identify more precise legal information. The commentary that you access through

a broad search gives you a better understanding of the area of law relevant to

your research question. Importantly, it also leads you to the relevant case law and

legislation.

In legal practice, lawyers will have an extensive knowledge of relevant case law

and legislation upon which they can draw when dealing with a range of

commonly encountered legal issues, and they will be up to date with recent legal

developments. There can be legal questions they can answer and legal problems

they can solve without doing any research at all. Their background knowledge

means they can go directly to an authoritative source.

2. Principle 1: Adopt a systematic approach. Take a structured and systematic

approach to your legal research. Plan your research carefully. Undertake some

1
background reading and then narrow your focus. Think carefully about your key

search terms. Hence, it is important to make background readings that are

current and reliable. Use the background readings to lead to the relevant primary

sources that can give relevant findings, cases and journal articles, and other

useful sources of information to guide and assist in understanding relevant issues

and legal terms.

Principle 2: Know where to look. Ensure that you understand the various

primary and secondary sources of legal information and where these sources can

be located, both online and in hard copy. Ensure that you understand the

research tools you are using. Hence, it is important to familiarize with the

resources being used.

Principle 3: Access good-quality information. Recognize the advantages and

disadvantages of online and hard-copy sources. Ensure that the information you

access is current, authoritative and relevant. Hence, it is important to commit in

an efficient and effective legal research. It is important to be patient and know

when to stop to have a quality research.

Principle 4: Read actively and efficiently. Finding quality information is only the

first step. Once you have found the information, you then need to be able to read

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it and make sense of it. Hence, it is important to to achieve understanding

without spending too much time on the task and without wasting time with

inefficient approaches.

Principle 5: Apply your research. You may have found good-quality information

and understood it, but you also need to be able to apply the results of your legal

research to problem solving and academic writing. You also need to provide

evidence of your research in the form of referencing. Hence, it is important to

organize the results of your research. It is important to show your readers the

pertinent arguments by citing the primary and secondary sources.

3. Principle 1. The very foundation of conducting an effective and efficient legal

research is to plan where to start and what approach to use to attack a legal

question or legal research. An important part of taking a systematic approach to a

research is doing a background reading in the relevant area. It is necessary to do

a background research to find out about the key legislation, cases and journal

articles relevant to the research. Hence, it is important to make a current and

reliable background readings in conducting legal research.

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