Unit 4 Mid-Module Assignment
Riley Jay-Crage
‘The goal of legal research is to find laws or precedents that support your arguments and undermine those of the other side.’ In the light of this statement discuss the purpose of legal research, and techniques that are available to do it.
The purpose of this essay is to explain the importance of legal research as well as cover various research methods and sources and explain why they are beneficial to legal based professionals and individuals.
What is legal research and why is it used? Legal research is the process of obtaining the necessary information to support legal cases/decision-making as well as making yourself familiar with the laws surrounding the nature of the case. Legal research
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Below I have listed reliable and commonly used sources of legal information, these sources range from:
• Printed student textbooks “Student textbooks collect together, analyze, and criticize the law in particular areas. They traditionally deal with an individual area of legal study. There is a wide range of textbooks within various subject”
• Cases and material books, these are a good way of gathering supporting materials, however they are only a starting point for research but aren’t used for finding and reading original materials.
• Practitioners books, these are primarily used as references by practicing lawyers, and are written by practicing lawyers, it is also worth noting these are generally expensive.
• Monographs, these are a detailed study usually of a specialized topic, whereas student textbooks cover a wider range of topics, these cover specialized topics in greater depth
• Journals, these can be used to keep up to date with the latest developments in law, there is a wide range of journals which are all very similar and released regularly, these include general journals, specialist journals, practitioner journals and foreign journals.
• Conventional and legal dictionaries, legal dictionaries can be used to check if a word has a specific legal meaning and can also be used to identify an unfamiliar term. “The
An AUSTRAC resource that legal practitioners would find useful is AUSTRAC’s Public Legal Interpretations (PLIs). PLIs
"Law Digest - Law Summaries - Legal Statutes." Law Digest Law Guides Legal Questions &
Their jargon includes a lot of legal terms. Examples include discovery, Writ, continued, PSI, and restitution. Discovery is a formal request by a party in a case to provide them with the information they have on the case. Continuance is rescheduling a case for another day. Restitution is money that the defendant has to pay to the victim. Pre-sentence investigation (PSI) is background investigation done on a person who has been convicted of a crime. A writ of habeas corpus (writ) is an order to transport a defendant to court from their holding facility.
Cite-checking sources are the modern way to check authorities. Before computer-assisted legal research was invented, most attorneys updated their research using books. Shepard’s Citators, published as a series of cumulative volumes was the
This guide covers only American law and publications. This guide also cites sources from Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis along
In addition, we have European law, a major source of legislation related to employment matters for example, treaties (applies to trading activities across the UK), Regulations, Directives (UK Legislation) and decisions, which set precedence and legal test.
By constructing theories or representations we can increase our understanding of criminal conduct. Through improving our understanding we can create effective, and operational strategies to handle crime issues. We must have a sufficient amount of accurate and documented research, and or experiments to prove the validity of our research. Research is attaining the information and data needed to generate a theory. We gather research by creating specific controlled experiments to reach a conclusion that will satisfy, or otherwise attest our theories.
The research participants must be informed about the basic purpose of the study and they must voluntarily agree to take part (Israel & Hay, 2006). As mentioned above, the researcher implies responsibility to provide subjects with information about the purpose, risks and methods of research. It is vital that research participants understand the possible risks and benefits of research, as well as the extent to which confidentiality is maintained. However, there are difficulties with explaining the details of research because not all participants value or understand the nature of criminological research. The researcher may use specialised terms or language in criminal justice research that participants do not understand.
This paper addresses the functions and role of law in business and society. This paper covers different types of laws including statutes, common laws, treaties, ordinances, and executive orders. As the paper continues it will discuss who creates and enforces these laws. This paper also discusses the classification of those laws into criminal and civil law, substantive and procedural law, and public and private laws. As these subjects are discussed the paper will discuss what individuals or entities are responsible for using these different types of laws. The paper also discusses the different types of courts where these laws are enforced
In this essay we will discuss the process of legal research, writing, and analysis. The subject matter will be presented in a clear, concise and objective manner. The textbook that we will be referencing is "Gilbert Law Summaries: Legal Research, Writing, and Analysis" 10th ed, BarBri Group, 2006.
The research also made use of secondary sources such as Legal encyclopaedias, Treatises Legal periodicals; Practice materials and domestic relations lecture notes. These materials were helpful and constituted a good source of citations.
When thinking about Criminal Justice it’s obvious that research is involved in solving crime. But it goes much further than that. Research is actually conducted in Criminal Justice itself. Research is done in Criminal Justice for a number of reasons. Research can be conducted in Criminal Justice for three main reasons; social problems, policy and academics. Then a number of other additional reasons are exploration, description, explanation, application, predictive and finally intervening. Within why research is conducted is another important aspect of Criminal Justice is Methodology; which is how the research is being conducted. Each of these topics will further be explained in depth.
Critically assess the different sources and characteristics of the English Legal System. To what extents have external influences affected its development.
And so today, it is needed to rely on socio-legal research for law reform, which serve the various purposes such as it suggests a reform in the existing law, socio-legal research, collect, search and make available the legal principle which are useful for society, it suggests a set of rules where no rules exist at all.
The legal profession has been around for a long time, as it is one of the oldest information professions . The service it provides is essential, as it