file:jresearch3.htm

7.   Reading
The Law

Internal Evaluation through:

7.1.1 Surveys

7.1.2 Legal Periodicals

7.1.3 Annotations

7.1.4 Loose-Leaf services

7.1.5 Treaties

8.   Updating The Law

• Shepards Citations
• Paras/Dizon’s Citations
• RP Digest Citator Volume
• Computer-Assisted Legal
  Research

9.  Writing Your
Decision

Pay attention to the grammar, the substantive content, the lucidity of
arguments and its development, the preciseness of the words used, and the
accuracy and completeness of the citations.

10.  General
Pointers In Legal Research

In finding the law, your ultimate goal is to find mandatory primary
authorities bearing on your legal problem. If these are either scarce or
nonexistent, your next priority should be to find persuasive primary
authorities. Finally, if all else fails, you might rely on relevant secondary
authorities.

10.1 Whenever your research focuses on primary
sources, you should normally start with statutes, because they can control the
other kinds of primary law (except for constitutional provisions);
administrative regulations exist only by virtue of a statute authorizing their
promulgations, and court decisions can be and often are-overturned or at least
modified by statutes

10.2 Do not rely on summaries (e.g., case
headnotes, statutory annotations, generalizations in legal encyclopedias) as
necessarily being either accurate or authoritative statements of the law.
Although such summaries are helpful guides, they can never substitute for the
primary authorities themselves. To determine precisely what a summarized
primary authority says or means, you must read it for yourself.

10.3 Remember that titles of sub-topics listed
under the various topics in case digests, as well as indexes in secondary
reference works (e.g., legal encyclopedias) do not classify legal
subject matter with scientific precision. Consequently, when you have found an
entry you think is relevant to you research problem, you generally should
examine neighboring entries also.

10.4 When doing a descriptive or fact word search
in an index of a set of annotated statutes, an administrative code, case
digest; or some other primary search complete as soon as you find your first
word listed, even if it has several index entries under it. Try some of your
other descriptive words, too; they may lead you to still other relevant
sources.

10.5 Whenever you do your research in a secondary
source of the law, start by reading the table of contents, preface, or other
introductory remarks, or any section with a title like ‘Scope Note’ or ‘Scope
Analysis.’ These sections will explain the reference work’s coverage and may
help you determine at the outset whether the book will be useful in your
research. Spending a few minutes determining a reference’s scope before
investing extensive time reading through it will often prevent wasted research
efforts.

10.6 Finally, always look for authorities that
undermine the position for which you are contending as well as those that
support it. In legal research, you need to discover not only the law that helps
you, but also the law that will hurt you, so you can anticipate and answer
objections that may arise to the arguments you advance.

10.7 Always begin your research from the latest
to the earliest in order not to waste your time. But put the date of your research
so that when the same problem occurs, you need only to update your research
from that date.

III.  CONCLUSION

There are non-legal materials which could be used depending upon the nature
of the problem. Skills in legal research are focused on the researcher’s
critical need to know how to draw effectively or how to select from the myriad
of lawbooks, the one book required at any given point in solving a problem.

There is no uniform rule as to how extensive the research should be in
solving a legal problem. This is influenced by the nature of the problem, the
available sources, the legal measures being adopted and of course, the research
habits and attitudes of the lawyers or researchers. But in any situation,
please take note that common sense has a significant bearing on the
research procedure.