What Legal Research Is

In one line

Legal research is research whose subject is the law, and it is unlike research in most other fields because its primary sources are texts that are authoritative rather than evidence that is merely true.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: legal research is the systematic investigation of legal problems, comprising the ascertainment of the law on a point, the analysis and critical examination of legal rules and institutions, the comparison of legal systems, the historical study of legal development, and the empirical study of the operation of law in society; it differs from research in the natural and social sciences in that its principal primary sources, statutes and judgments, are authoritative texts whose meaning is the object of study, rather than observations of the world.

The distinguishing feature

In most fields a primary source is an observation. A measurement, a specimen, a record of what happened.

In law the principal primary sources are texts with authority. A section of an Act is not evidence of the law; it is the law. A judgment is not a report of a decision; it is the decision.

Three consequences follow, and they run through the whole module.

One: accuracy of the text matters absolutely. A researcher who works from an unamended copy of an Act has not made a small error; they have researched a different rule. Chapter 950 is about exactly this.

Two: interpretation is part of the method. In a field where the source is a text, working out what it means is not preliminary to the research but a large part of it.

Three: authority has a hierarchy. A Supreme Court decision is not merely better evidence than a High Court decision; it binds. No other discipline has sources arranged by rank.

The five kinds of legal research

Ascertaining the law. Finding and stating the position on a point. This is what most professional legal research is, and it is the least of the five academically because the answer exists.

Analytical and critical. Taking a rule apart, showing what it assumes, where it is inconsistent, and whether it is defensible. Chapter 900.

Comparative. Setting the rule beside another system's answer to the same problem. Chapter 880.

Historical. Asking how the rule came to be, which often explains why it is as it is. Chapter 890.

And empirical. Asking what actually happens under the rule. Chapters 860 and 680.

A dissertation usually combines them, and MU's Semester IV project is expressly interdisciplinary, chapter 910.

Who does legal research, and why

The practitioner, to advise a client or argue a case. Their question is narrow, their deadline is short and their standard is that the answer must be right, not that it must be new.