Legal Research on the Internet

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 113-135

113

CHAP TER 5

LEGAL RESEARCH ON

THE INTERNET

A. INTRODUCTION

The Internet continues to drastically change legal research. Tradition-

ally, legal researchers used print mater ials in law libra ries to f‌ind law-

related information. This meant th at one was limited to the amount of

space and materials the print-based law library could afford, a limita-

tion that often meant that the law library had a f‌in ite collection focus-

ing on materials from within its own jur isdiction. While CD-ROMs

and online commercial databases have brought legal research to the

researcher’s desktop (especially over the last f‌ifteen to t wenty years),

it has been recent Internet technology that continues to revolutionize

the way legal research is conducted. This chapter will focus on freely

available Internet resources, whi le Chapter 6 will focus on commercial,

fee-based online legal rese arch database s.

The free Internet has several applications for legal resea rch:

as a source of information (searching the World Wide Web)UÊ

as a means of communication (using e-mail)UÊ

as a virtual community (using law-related discussion groups, blogs, UÊ

and RSS feeds)

The usefulness of the Internet for legal resea rch is reinforced by

its wide availabil ity throughout most jurisdict ions in the world and

LEGAL R ESEARCH A ND WRITING114

its relat ive eas e-of-use.1 A part icularly nice feature of the Internet is

the ability to expa nd legal resources beyond the wall s of one’s own

print law librar y to online international a nd foreign legal resources

that would not have been easily accessible to most researchers through

traditional mean s. While the Internet has a number of usef ul features,

it is always necessar y for the researcher to evaluate the quality of in-

formation that is being found, especi ally since not all material on t he

Internet has been subject to the same level of editori al control as most

print or onl ine fee-based publicat ions.

B. EVALUATING WEB INFORM ATION

The re are stan dard crit eri a by wh ich f ree w ebsit es sh ould b e eva luate d.2

These criteria include a number of things t hat evaluate the quality and

reliability of the inform ation to be found on the site:

AuthorshipUÊ : Who authored the material? Is it clear who owns t he web-

site? Is the site aff‌iliated with a reliable or know n publisher or organ-

ization? Does the site provide a mailing address, phone number, and

e-mail address? It is always import ant to consider authorship when

using freely available websites —anyone can publish a website with

relative ease with no objective editorial policies or control.

Accuracy and quality:UÊ Is the site free of spelling and grammatical er-

rors? Does the site contain broken links? Well-maintained websites

tend to mean that the owner of the site is t aking the time to keep the

information current and accurate.

1 This chapter as sumes the reader has some e xperience in using the I nternet

for research or ba sic searching. If not, the fol lowing two books, although now

somewhat dated, ar e good introductory resource s for lawyers or law students:

Lewis S. Ei sen’s Canadian Lawyer’s Interne t Guide, 3d ed. (Thornhill, ON: Ami-

cus Legal Publ ishing, 1997) (also available on Lex isNexis Quicklaw) or Drew

Jackson & Timothy Taylor, The Inter net Handbook for Canadian Law yers, 3d ed.

(Toronto: Carswell, 2000).

2 See, for example, Gen ie Tybursk i, “Evaluating the Qual ity of Information on

the Internet,” onli ne: www.virtualchas e.com/quality; Amer ican Association

of Law Librar ies, “General Website Evaluation Cr iteria,” online: www.aal lnet.

org/committee /aelic/criteria.htm l; Sabrina I. Pacif‌ici, “Getti ng It Right: Verify-

ing Sources on t he Net” (1 March 2 002), online: w ww.llrx.com www.llrx.com /

features /verifying.htm; Mi rela Roznovschi, “Updat e to Evaluating Foreign and

Internation al Legal Database s on the Internet” (30 September 200 0), online:

www.llrx.com www.llrx.com/features/evaluating2.htm.