Secondary Legal Resources

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 36-65

36

CHAP TER 2

SECONDARY LEGAL

RESOURCES

The goal of legal research is to f‌ind relevant legislation or judicial deci-

sions (i.e., primary legal resources) that apply to the particular legal

problem being researched because only leg islation or judicial decisions

have the power to affect legal rights. However, f‌inding relevant statutes

and cases can be a challenge for f‌irst-time legal researchers.

Therefore, an effective legal research technique when starting to re-

search a particular problem is to f‌irst consult secondar y legal resources

to gain a broad overview of the topic. Secondary legal resources include

such things as textbooks, law journals, seminar papers, encyclopedias,

case law digests, Web guides, and other reference tools. Starting w ith

secondary legal research resources has several advantages:

Secondary legal resources generally provide a good synopsis of the UÊ

law and provide footnotes or links to relevant legislation or case

law.

They are usually written by ex perts in their f‌ield, allowing the re-UÊ

searcher to take advantage of someone else’s work.

Most materials are relatively current, especially if they are in loose-UÊ

leaf form at or online.

Some secondary legal resources, such as leading textbooks or well-UÊ

researched law journal articles, are highly persuasive in court.

This chapter provides a brief overview of textbooks, law journals,

CLE/seminar papers, legal encyclopedias, ca se law digests, and general

legal reference resources (law dictionaries, legal citation guides, legal

Secondary L egal Resources 37

directories, forms and precedents, cour t rules, current awareness tools,

and Web guides). The emphasis will be on Canadian materials, with

discussion of British, American, and Australian materials where rel-

evant, since these are usually the other jurisdictions of most interest to

Canadian legal researchers.

A. TEXTBOOKS

Lawyers, judges, academics, and other researchers have written books

on most, if not all, legal topics imaginable. If you f‌ind a relevant book

covering your area of legal research, you will have saved yourself a lot

of time by leveraging the research of experts on the topic (the notion of

“standing on the shoulders of giants”).

You can f‌ind law-related textbooks at most courthouse, law society,

and law school law librarie s. Many law f‌irms also own t heir own law-re-

lated textbooks relevant to their own areas of practice (for information

on selecting or acquiring law-related resources, see Chapter 9). Search-

ing for law-related textbooks has been m ade easy with the advent of the

Internet. Catalogues for major law librar ies in Canada (and throughout

the world) can now be found online (see Table 2.1). Searching these

online library catalogues by author, title, subject, or keyword can help

you identify relevant materials for your topic to help you decide if you

want to try to borrow the material or buy it for yourself.

Table 2.1

Chart of Online Canadian Library Catalogues Containing

Law-Related Material

Law Library WWW Address for Cata logue

Diana M. Pr iestly Law Library (UVic) http://li brary.law.uvic.ca

UBC Law Library www.library.ubc.ca

B.C. Courthouse Libra ry Society www.courthousel ibrary.ca

U of Calgary Law L ibrary http://osiris.lib.ucalgary.ca

John A Weir Memorial Law Library

(U of Alberta)

www.library.ualberta.ca

U of Saskatchewan L aw Library http://sundog.usask.ca

E.K. Williams Law Library (U of

Manitoba)

www.umanitoba.ca/libraries

U of Western Ontario L aw Library www.lib.uwo.ca

U of Windsor Law Library http://cronus.uwindsor.ca/libra ry