Where to Start a Legal Research
A legal research plan is a strategy of identifying legal information that can be cited in a given brief or trial. The benefits of legal research are that it assists the attorney to identify whether a legal issue has or lacks precedent (Davidson, 2010). The United States (U.S) legal system is based on precedent, which means that court cases are decided based on common laws and statutes. As such, the role of legal research is to establish how previous court cases were decided based on the similar fact (Bell, 2012). A legal research plan starts with self-assessment. The legal researcher needs to understand what comes naturally to him or her by identifying his or her strengths and weaknesses. Generally, the best method to be employed in legal research is one that adequately fits with one’s strengths and weaknesses (Davidson, 2010). Besides, this method should assist the researcher to stay on task, tracks the progress, and guide the individual to the information needed. For instance, a typical research plan will breakdown the research questions into specific tasks, identify their sources, and begin the identification of search terms (Davidson, 2010). Ideally, there are pre-established legal research steps, however, the exclusion and inclusion of these steps in the research process vary depending on what one knows before beginning the project and the project scope.
Where to end in a Legal Research
As highlighted, the aim of legal research is to identify the primary mandatory authority that adequately controls one’s legal issues, which could be law from the highest authority, such as state, local or federal. Persuasive authority entails primary authority from other jurisdictions, decisions from lower courts within one’s jurisdiction, and secondary authority (Davidson, 2010). To achieve this objective, as discussed above, one needs to implement a legal research plan that adequately resonates with one’s strength and weaknesses (Bell, 2012). This approach may include strategies such as being consistent with the plan, retrieving, reading and updating the cases, taking good notes highlighting the significance of each case, and recording the requisite citation information as one proceeds with the legal research. In case of challenges during this process, it is effective and efficient for the legal researcher to consult the librarian (Bell, 2012). A legal researcher will reach a decision to stop the research if he or she keeps on finding the same resources. In this circumstance, the legal researcher will not be finding any new information that will be beneficial in the research process (Davidson, 2010). The legal researcher should feel confident that he or she has conducted thorough research.
References
Bell, J. (2012). The Future of Legal Research. Legal Information Management, 12(4), 314-317. doi: 10.1017/s1472669612000680
Davidson, S. (2010). Way beyond Legal Research: Understanding the Research Process of Legal Scholars. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1537336