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LEGAL RESEARCH
If you look up one of the textbooks on 'legal research' you will be told how to find statutes and cases, using hard copy and on-line legal sources. It is really remarkable how narrowly 'legal research' is defined. (For a longer discussion of this phenomenon see D. Manderson & R. Mohr, 'From Oxymoron to Intersection: an Epidemiology of Legal Research', (2002) 6 Law Text Culture 159-182). For present purposes, we will stick to this narrow definition, since the rest of this website on 'postgraduate research in law' describes a myriad other approaches.
Law graduates will probably have had more experience in this type of research than in many of the other types which may be necessary. However, since on-line sources are expanding so rapidly, it is well worth checking that your repertoire of searching methods is up to date. One good way to do that is to print out the module Postgraduate Checklist, fill it in, and discuss it with the Law Librarians.
Graduates of other disciplines, or from jurisdictions outside Australia, may need to start at a more elementary level in exploring methods of legal research, using other on-line and library resources. See the discussion of the course LLB 9395 Legal Research and Writing. This is an elementary guide to legal searching which you may find useful if you are new to the field.
The best books on 'legal research' narrowly defined are:
- Enright, Christopher. Studying Law. 5th ed. Sydney: Federation Press, 1995.
- Morris, Gwen, Catriona Cook, Robin Creyke, Robert Geddes, and Ian Holloway. Laying Down the Law. The foundations of legal reasoning, research and writing in Australia. Fourth ed. Sydney: Butterworths, 1996.