Preface

• Author: Arlene Blatt/JoAnn Kurtz
• Pages: 15-17

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Preface

This book, now in its fifth edition, is designed for students who have no previous experi-

ence of legal research. We demonstrate how to approach legal research by analyzing fact

situations and identifying legal issues, and we provide detailed, practical guidance on

how to use various resources—both online resources and traditional print ones—to find

solutions to legal issues. The many examples and exercises we have included will make

this text very useful in the classroom.

The book underwent a major reorganization in its fourth edition to make it easier to use

and to reflect the increasing availability and importance of online legal research sources.

New to that edition were a discussion of how to undertake effective keyword searches,

an essential skill for anyone conducting online legal research, and a chapter taking the

students through a sample research problem, step by step, from start to finish.

Because online sources are constantly evolving, not long after the publication of the

fourth edition, a revised fourth edition was published to maintain currency by reflecting

changes to Lexis Advance Quicklaw and the online version of the Canadian Encyclopedic

Digest (CED), and to provide updated screenshots and search instructions.

And because the only constant is change, we are now publishing this fifth edition. In

addition to reflecting changes in the online sources, we have taken this opportunity to

provide new examples and exercises and to update, streamline, and clarify the content of

the text throughout.

Following is a chapter-by-chapter account of the fifth edition’s contents and features,

highlighting the changes from the fourth edition.

Chapter 1: The Basics of Legal Re search

This chapter sets out the purpose and basic steps of legal research and identifies in general

terms the categories of law, the sources of law, and the skills required to be an effective

re se arc he r.

Chapter 2: Statutes

This chapter explains why and how a legal researcher reads statutes and their provisions,

as well as the nature of a statute, how statutes are created and published, and how to

interpret statutory citations, and has been updated to include more current statutes and

additional exercises.

Chapter 3: Regulations

This chapter explains what regulations are, why and how we read them, and how they are

cited. It includes material on how regulations are created and published.

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