Techniques of legal research

The url or doi link below will ensure access to this page research: techniques and ideas. Keith victoria university of wellington - faculty of law; victoria university of wellington - faculty of article considers the connection between research techniques and the development of new ideas, and the manner in which the former trigger off the latter. It discusses specific methods of research in respect of the study of case law and of statutes. The author considers that the relationship between research and teaching is important as the combination of the two is conducive to the production of original ideas.

In the final part of the paper, the author discusses the value that research oriented work provides to legislative law reform and to the development of the common ds: legal research, research techniques, legal teaching, legal education, reading classification: k10, k19, er, e. Box 600wellington, 6140new ia university of wellington legal studies research paper ia university of wellington legal studies research paper ibe to this free journal for more curated articles on this journal is curated by:John prebble qc at victoria university of wellington - faculty of law, nina opacic at victoria university of wellington - faculty of law, faye mcintosh at university of writing writing ibe to this free journal for more curated articles on this journal is curated by:Terry jean seligmann at drexel university thomas r. Paul at northeastern university - school of & society: the legal profession & society: the legal profession ibe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this journal is curated by:William d. Peoples at oklahoma city tion in legal education tion in legal education ibe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this journal is curated by:Oliver r.

Canadian legal research and writing   /  writing & analysis  /  stare decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal ght ©1987 paul m. Ally published in (1987) 2:2,3 legal research update 11 and republished with gives away no secret to observe that lawyers have their own unique discipline and approach to the resolution of legal problems. This paper is also about how a lawyer in everyday practice answers a legal question and how that lawyer evaluates and formulates legal arguments. Because different legal systems have different approaches to the proper way of deciding a legal point, the perspective will be canadian and primarily that of doctrine of stare is the doctrine of precedent or of stare decisis?

We know that in the flux of life all the facts of a case will never recur, but the legally material facts may recur and it is with these that the doctrine is ratio decidendi [reason of deciding] of a case can be defined as the material facts of the case plus the decision thereon. Let us then consider the example of a lawyer preparing legal argument for lawyer will be appearing before a particular court and the first thing that the lawyer must do is to note the rank of that court in the hierarchy of courts. In his or her research, the lawyer will therefore look for cases with results which support the client’s position and the lawyer will prepare to argue that the ratio decidendi of those precedent cases covers the facts of the case at bar. That said, more difficult problems of legal reasoning and legal argument occur when the lawyer is unable to find a close case or any case at all or, worse yet, when a case presents itself which appears to be unfavourable.

Get around an apparently unfavourable case, there are a number of tools and techniques available to the lawyer. This is not to say that lawyers and judges must deal with every case that remotely touches on a subject but only that there should be an honest effort to play by the techniques that are available follow as a consequence of accepting and then manipulating the doctrine of stare decisis. The following are generally recognized:The lawyer can argue that the precedent case does not stand for the legal proposition for which it has been cited. Without resolving the difficulties associated with this case observed:Nonetheless it must be acknowledged that rivtow has been variously applied or rejected by the courts of this country, some of whom find in the majority judgment recognition of economic loss and some of whom have found the lawyer can argue that while the precedent case does articulate the legal proposition for which it has been cited, nevertheless the proposition was obiter dicta (things said by the way).

Should be noted that if a judge rests his decision on two different grounds neither can be characterized as obiter lawyer can argue that while the precedent case does stand for the legal proposition for which it has been cited, the case has been effectively overruled by a decision of a high court or by the introduction of a new statute. Examples of this kind of legal argument will obviously occur after significant decisions of the supreme court of canada. Nielsen35 did away with the distinction between non-feasance and misfeasance in negligence actions against municipalities and many old cases which turned on that distinction can no longer be relied lawyer can argue that while the precedent case does stand for the legal proposition for which it has been cited, the case at bar is different; that is, the cases are factually distinguishable. The material fact of the plaintiff’s lack of reliance provided the element for non-restrictive distinguishing of hedley the case being relied upon has a built in public policy factor, the lawyer who wishes to distinguish the case may argue that public policy has changed and while the legal principle of the precedent case is still good law, it is distinguishable because of the change of circumstances.

In his judgment in this case, lord watson noted:A series of decisions based upon grounds of public policy, however eminent the judges by whom they were delivered, cannot possess the same binding authority as decisions which deal with and formulate principles which are purely lawyer can argue that while the precedent case does stand for the legal proposition for which it has been cited, there is another precedent of equal weight which stands for the opposite proposition. Then again the woolfrey rule will be argument when there is no binding above seven types of legal argument are the principle techniques used to get around an apparently binding precedent and we can turn next to the problem of not being able to find a precedent case. Because there is considerable room for imagination and creativity in responding to this problem, it is more difficult to identify the main techniques. A lawyer cannot find a binding precedent, he or she may form a legal argument from first principles.

This approach identifies legal principles from decided cases and argues that while the factual circumstances of the cases may appear different, analytically they are the same. This kind of legal argument is often used with respect to determining the measure of damages. Is often cited as authority for the legal principle that where there is a breach of contract then as far as money can do so, the injured party is to be placed in as good a position as if the contract had been performed. In that case, there were two strong dissenting judgments of lord buckmaster and lord tomlin and their legal argument was that the plaintiff’s claim did not come within the reach of the established authorities but represented a new type of claim.

Stevenson does not offend the letter or spirit of the doctrine of stare decisis and provides a classic example of legal reasoning and legal argument in circumstances where there was no near precedent for the paper has focused on one aspect of legal reasoning and argument, that of the use of precedent. Yet, while the multitude of these rules provides the lawyer with a large variety of other tools and techniques for legal reasoning and legal argument, it also has to be conceded that stare decisis continues to play the pivotal role. Doctrine of stare decisis and the hierarchy of the argument when there is a argument when there is no binding & resources for legal ing a legal memorandum of decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal on linking -by-step legal research help at each stage of the legal research canadian legal research and writing   /  writing & analysis  /  stare decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal ght ©1987 paul m. Doctrine of stare decisis and the hierarchy of the argument when there is a argument when there is no binding & resources for legal ing a legal memorandum of decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal on linking -by-step legal research help at each stage of the legal research wikipedia, the free to: navigation, research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making.

In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and communication of the results of the investigation. However, legal research generally involves tasks such as:Finding primary sources of law, or primary authority, in a given jurisdiction (cases, statutes, regulations, etc. Secondary authority (for example, law reviews, legal dictionaries, legal treatises, and legal encyclopedias such as american jurisprudence and corpus juris secundum), for background information about a legal ing non-legal sources for investigative or supporting are a number of books available for those wishing to undertake legal research in the uk context. 6] free-to-access services, through the free law movement, include: australasian legal information institute, british and irish legal information institute, canlii, legal information institute, lexml brasil, world legal information institute, mindworks and cial databases and software[edit].

As of 2010, commercial legal research tools in the united states generated an estimated $8 billion in revenues per year. Governments also provide access to certain resources through paid databases, such as the united states pacer law -party legal research providers[edit]. Research is known to take much time and effort, and access to online legal research databases such as lexisnexis and westlaw can be costly. Consequently, law firms and other practitioners may turn to third-party legal research providers to outsource their legal research august 5, 2008, the american bar association, standing committee on ethics and professional responsibility, issued formal opinion 08-451, entitled "lawyer’s obligations when outsourcing legal and nonlegal support services.

In addition, the availability of lawyers and nonlawyers to perform discrete tasks may, in some circumstances, allow for the provision of labor-intensive legal services by lawyers who do not otherwise maintain the needed human resources on an ongoing basis. A small firm might not regularly employ the lawyers and legal assistants required to handle a large, discovery-intensive litigation effectively. Outsourcing, however, can enable that firm to represent a client in such a matter effectively and efficiently, by engaging additional lawyers to conduct depositions or to review and analyze documents, together with a temporary staff of legal assistants to provide infrastructural is no unique blueprint for the provision of competent legal services. Different lawyers may perform the same tasks through different means, all with the necessary “legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation.

The rule requires only that the lawyer who is responsible to the client satisfies her obligation to render legal services competently. Standing committee on ethics and professional responsibility thus concluded that "[t]here is nothing unethical about a lawyer outsourcing legal and nonlegal services, provided the outsourcing lawyer renders legal services to the client with the 'legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation,' as required by rule 1. Research in the united of sources of law in the united research at y resources ces in your library. Isbn ries: legal researchhidden categories: articles with dmoz logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia out wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this a bookdownload as pdfprintable page was last edited on 24 july 2017, at 05: is available under the creative commons attribution-sharealike license;.