B. Some Basic Legal Research Techniques

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 6-11

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This section of the book sets out some basic legal research techniques, all of which are touched upon or actually discussed in more detail throughout the book.

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Primary resources versus secondary resources. As a starting point, it helps to understand that law-related information can be divided into two basic categories: primary legal resources versus secondary legal resources. Primary legal resources consist of legislation (statutes and regulations) and case law (the decisions of courts and administrative tribunals). Secondary legal resources, on the other hand, are background materials that comment on or help explain how to use or find primary legal resources. Secondary legal resources include such things as textbooks, legal journals, encyclopedias, case law digests, dictionaries and word and phrases services, Web guides, and various current awareness tools. While secondary legal resources may carry some persuasive value with courts, it is ordinarily only primary legal material that will bind a court and directly affect a person’s legal rights. Thus, just as a doctor will not diagnose a patient without first conducting a physical examination of the patient, a lawyer should not render a legal opinion to a client without at least having consulted primary legal resources. Having said this, however, smart legal researchers will start their legal research with secondary legal resources (because of their broad overview and identification of relevant cases or legislation) and then finish their research by consulting and verifying primary sources of law.

Use of dictionaries and words and phrases services. Legal dictionaries and words and phrases services are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 and are useful for not only defining Latin and legal phrases, but in some cases, for finding cases or legislation in which particular terms have been defined. For those who cannot afford the cost of the hard-bound version of these dictionaries, the publishers of these dictionaries usually offer softcover, abridged versions of their dictionaries at a cheaper price (see Chapter 2 for a list of some of these pocket dictionaries). Both LEXISNEXIS Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada now have online words and phrases services.

Identifying the issue; starting broadly. A critical first step in legal research is correctly identifying the relevant factual and legal issues that one must research. Sometimes, the issue will be obvious or specific, such as "On what grounds can the police search a car trunk without a warrant?" In other cases, the issue may be less obvious and require some analysis to...