Every lawsuit, court appeal, criminal cases, and legal procedures need a certain amount of legal research. Legal research helps in determining the current legal scenarios and issues as well as helps in finding out a solution to deal with it. Every legal case follows proper regulation and practice. If any case has not undergone a proper legal protocol to chance of arriving at a proper conclusion will be extremely limited. To find out an answer to a legal question or to check for the legal precedent that can briefly draw an outline of the case details is what known as legal research
The two categories of general legal research are:
- The primary law is binding the statutes, regulations, and case law that’s codified in law.
- The sources that explain the primary law and the legal theory including legal digests, treatises, journals, etc are known as secondary sources.
If any country’s legal system is best described as following the proper legal precedent, it would be the U.S. legal system. The function of legal research is to find out how previous courts have acted on certain instances, what was the pattern and how did they decide. The study of the whole structure of the legal cases can help a country’s legal system to frame the right legal theories. This could even become the principle guidebook for other subsequent cases to be followed.
The legal theories are based on the following:
- A formal written expression by a court providing the details of principles of law or the reason based on which a decision was made. This is known as an opinion.
- A case can be based upon parallel citations. It is a citation reference of a case that can be simultaneously printed for two or more different case with some instances.
- Every court adheres to precedent on questions of law. This is followed in order to ensure certainty, consistency, and stability in the administration of justice. This doctrine is called stare decisis.
- Whether the case is considered good law, parallel citations, or the use of the case in other jurisdictions, the status of the case is check-in Shepard citation. This is known as Shepardize.
The legal research work comprises of taking the instance from the legal theories and principles.
It may be wise to talk to your attorney to understand how they use Legal Research. It is important because judges may often write opinions which is not easy for non-lawyers to follow. We all require an expert for that. An attorney will review statutes, case law, and secondary authority to guide you with a decision to proceed with your case. Your attorney would best know how the court would proceed and react in certain instances. Since they have already done a bit of research on precedent, case law with a similar fact pattern, they would have a little idea about where the case would lead to. Lawmakers do the same with statutes. A corporate lawyer may conduct legal research on building codes, employment laws or federal environmental regulations to understand and determine whether a proposed new policy would expose the company to liability.
The importance and benefits of legal research are:
- It is an important tool for lawyers and law firms.
- It governs the pertinent issues involving the basic search for a case that can be used as a consulting case.
- A good legal research can dispose of or eradicate the possibilities of failure.
- The legal research is indispensable for lawyers, regardless of area or type of practice.
- The legal research paves the path to the leading case governing the issues in question.
For any legal research find out the right laws is extremely crucial. The right conclusion depends on how a researcher would analyze the case that reveals before them through the research process. The research process needs to be taken very seriously, as it reveals the future possibilities of resolving any case without any discrepancies.