Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and communication of the results of the investigation." The processes of legal research vary according to the country and the legal system involved. Legal research involves tasks such as: # Finding primary sources of law, or primary authority, in a given

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...

( cases,

statutes A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made ...

, regulations, etc.). # Searching secondary authority, for background information about a legal topics. Secondary authorities can come in many forms (for example,

law review A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also p ...

s, legal dictionaries,

legal treatise A legal treatise is a scholarly legal publication containing all the law relating to a particular area, such as criminal law or trusts and estates. There is no fixed usage on what books qualify as a "legal treatise", with the term being used broad ...

s, and legal encyclopedias such as American Jurisprudence and Corpus Juris Secundum). # Searching non-legal sources for investigative or supporting information. Legal research is performed by anyone with a need for legal information, including lawyers, law librarians, and

paralegals A paralegal, also known as a legal assistant, or paralegal specialist is a professional who performs tasks that require knowledge of legal concepts but not the full expertise of a lawyer with a license to practice law. The market for paralegals ...

. Sources of legal information range from printed books, to free legal research websites (like Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, Findlaw.com, Martindale Hubbell or CanLII) and information portals to fee database vendors such as Wolters Kluwer,

LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer info ...

, Westlaw, Lex Intell, VLex and Bloomberg Law.

Law libraries A law library is a special library used by law students, lawyers, judges and their law clerks, historians and other scholars of legal history in order to research the law. Law libraries are also used by people who draft or advocate for n ...

around the world provide research services to help their patrons find the legal information they need in law schools, law firms and other research environments. Many law libraries and institutions provide free access to legal information on the web, either individually or via collective action, such as with the Free Access to Law Movement.

Databases and software tools

Free-to-use

Although many jurisdictions publish laws online, case law is often accessed through specialty online databases. Free-to-access services, through the free law movement, include: Australasian Legal Information Institute,

British and Irish Legal Information Institute The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII, pronounced "Bailey") provides legal information, and especially reports of cases decided by courts, in the United Kingdom generally. Decisions from England and Wales, Ireland, Northern ...

, CanLII, Law Library Resource Xchange, Legal Information Institute, Lex Intell and LexML Brasil. Google offers a free, searchable database of federal and state case law as part of

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

Commercial

Commercial services for legal research include both primary and secondary sources. Commercial services can be country-specific, international or comparative. As of 2010, commercial legal research tools in the United States generated an estimated $8 billion in revenues per year. Some governments also provide access to certain resources through paid databases, such as the United States PACER law system.

Third-party legal research providers

Legal research is known to take much time and effort, and access to online legal research databases can be costly. Consequently, with due consideration given to ethical concerns, law firms and other practitioners may turn to third-party legal research providers to outsource their legal research needs.

References

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