LEGAL METHOD AND INTRODUCTION
TO LEGAL SYSTEM
MODULE 6
LEGAL WRITING AND LEGAL RESEARCH
MR. ARINDAM NERAL
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW
RESEARCH MEANING &
OBJECTIVES
MEANING:
• Research is the diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation
into a subject in order to discover or revise facts or theories.
• Good research follows a systematic approach to capture accurate
data. It involves inductive and deductive methods.
• Inductive research methods analyze an observed event, while
deductive methods verify the observed event. Inductive approaches
are associated with qualitative research, and deductive methods are
more commonly associated with quantitative analysis.
OBJECTIVES:
1. Exploratory: Researchers conduct exploratory studies to
explore a group of questions. The answers and analytics may not
offer a conclusion to the perceived problem. It is undertaken to
handle new problem areas that haven’t been explored before.
2. Descriptive: It focuses on expanding knowledge on current
issues through a process of data collection. Descriptive
research describe the behavior of a sample population. The three
primary purposes of descriptive studies are describing, explaining,
and validating the findings.
3. Explanatory: Explanatory research is conducted to understand
the impact of specific changes in existing standard procedures.
Running experiments is the most popular form.
IMPORTANCE OF LEGAL RESEARCH
• Legal Research helps you focus on the facts of the case. One can
also identify the point of law in the disputed issue.
• Research will also help prepare arguments that you can use in
court and you will also need to lay down the evidence in that case,
which is also backed up by research.
• Legal Research supplements the area of practice, since it backs
up everything with credible sources, evidence and even historical
data. You get to have complete knowledge about the issue, and all
of that information can be harnessed in a professional manner.
SOURCES OF LEGAL RESEARCH
Legal research broadly has two sources:
1. PRIMARY SOURCES: Primary authorities are the rules of law
that are binding upon the courts, government, and individuals.
Examples: constitutions, statutes, regulations, treaties, court
orders, administrative regulations, policy material.
2. SECONDARY SOURCES: Commentaries, law journals or
periodicals, articles, textbooks, a legal encyclopedia, legal
dictionary, annotations, legal opinions, surveys, legislative history.
Secondary sources are important in legal research because they
point the researcher to primary sources of the law
DOCTRINAL & NON – DOCTRINAL RESEARCH
DOCTRINAL RESEARCH:
• Doctrine is a rule or principle of the law established through the
repeated application of legal precedents.
• It is concerned with the analysis of the legal doctrine and how it
was developed and applied. In short, it is library-based research that
seeks to find the “one right answer” to certain legal issues or
questions.
• However, the topics involved in such research are limited or
restricted.
• This often involves a great deal of background reading on a subject
using sources such as conventional/customary legal sources,
dictionaries, statutes, textbooks, treatises, and journals.
NON DOCTRINAL/EMPIRICAL RESEARCH:
• It is also known as socio-legal research.
• Empirical Research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of
direct or indirect observation or experience.
• It looks into how the law and legal institutions molds and affects
the society.
• It lays a different and lesser emphasis upon doctrine, it seeks to
answer broader and more numerous questions, it is not anchored
exclusively to appellate reports and other traditional legal resource
for its data and it may involve the use of research perspectives,
research designs, conceptual frameworks, skills, and training not
peculiar to law trained personnel.
• Field work is usually required for this type of research.
METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION
There are many methods of collecting data. Some commonly used
data collection methods are:
1. Surveys
2. Interviews
3. Focus Groups
4. Questionnaire
5. Case Study
CITATION AND ITS
IMPORTANCE
• A "citation" is the way you inform the reader of the research project
that certain material in the work came from another source. It gives
proper credit to the authors of the words or ideas that one has
incorporated into the paper.
• It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that
source, including:
a) information about the author
b) the title of the work
c) the name and location of the company that published your copy
of the source
d) the date of publication
e) the page numbers of the material you are citing.
IMPORTANCE:
1. Citation makes you a better researcher.
2. Good citation practices make you a better writer.
3. A good bibliography shows off your scientific knowledge.
4. Citation enables better verification of your work.