Conducting legal research is foundational to your work, no matter what level you are as a lawyer or your practice area. After all, knowledge equals value. The more that you research cases and grow familiar with precedents and decisions, the more you can better advise clients and build winning strategies.
That’s why lawyers need access to reliable tools with which to conduct case law research. The most useful case law research tool enables you to winnow down queries quickly and accurately.
It will provide a way to absorb content via a well-organized, easy-to-follow informational system that will also allow you to connect the dots, in terms of inter-related cases.
But while there’s a wide variety of case law research tools out there to explore and implement this method, what’s essential is to know which legal research tools will be of the most value to you.
You may be looking for information to bolster an argument for a particular case or want to see how previous cases have been decided before your firm takes on a new client. Some primary needs of legal research are:
Some primary needs of legal research are:
Get a sense of what current law is on a specific subject. To be sure you’re on the right track, you need to know what you are looking for—is it a specific area of the law? How cases have been decided in a given period?
Among the areas to research include:
Once you’ve done your research and gathered information from various case histories, how do you best organize this information? What’s the easiest and most effective way to assemble what you’ve learned.
By now, if not before, determine whether the law you’re researching is “good” law—that is, that a court hasn’t invalidated it or struck it down.
Here’s where a legal research tool like Prime or Primsol will list subsequent cases that have cited your source, along with any negative history, such as an overruling.
Developments in technology over the past few decades have made legal research faster, more current, and, in many cases, far more comprehensive.
A superior legal research tool is defined by a set of key attributes.
1 – Accuracy and comprehensiveness of content,
2 – Advanced technology that makes it easier and faster to find what you are looking for, and
3 – Editorially enhanced content that makes it easier for an attorney to search, validate, and interpret the law.
While, lawyers have a number of research tools at their disposal, Westlaw Precision, the newest version of Westlaw, Prime by LawPavilion and Primsol by LawPavilion, provides access to a wide depth and breadth of legal resources that significantly enhance the speed and quality of research.
What does a lawyer want most from their research tools? As always, it boils down to features that serve practical needs. Is the research tool reliable? Is it easy to use? Are its search functions thorough, and its holdings up-to-date?
A good case law research site will be user-friendly, with easy-to-follow guidelines and artificial intelligence prompts to answer queries.
Finding the most applicable cases is essential to any legal research effort. A good case law research tool enables a lawyer to quickly and easily build upon discoveries—once the lawyer finds a pertinent case, it should be intuitive for them to springboard into other documents.
Few things are permanently settled in the law—there’s always the chance that a regulation may be altered, removed, or struck down, or that a case ruling may get overturned. This is why timeliness is critical to legal research, and why lawyers need to know immediately should anything change affecting documents they’ve been researching.
For a legal strategy to succeed, lawyers must back their arguments up with the most compelling, cleanly presented, and rock-solid legal research possible. This is why it’s essential for them to have the best case law research tools available, and well before they set foot in a courtroom or boardroom.
Visit lawpavilion.com to subscribe to Prime, the best legal research and analytics tool in Nigeria.
First published on: thomsonreutersblog
Hon. Justice Sinmisola Adeniyi of the Abuja Judicial Division of the National Industrial Court has…
By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN The main responsibility of the court is to interpret the law…
ByAmb. Hameed Ajibola Jimoh, Esq. FIGPCM, CGARB. (CERTIFIED GLOBAL PEACE AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND MANAGEMENT…
CASE TITLE: ORIENTAL ENERGY RESOURCES LTD v. NICON INSURANCE PLC (2024) LPELR-61988(CA) JUDGMENT DATE: 25TH…
The body of law for copyright protection in Nigeria is the Copyright Act 2022 and judicial decisions…
What is the Meaning of Indefinite Suspension? Suspension is the placement of an employee in…