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Legal Careers: Legal Researcher
Due to the sheer volume of electronic resources for legal research that are now available, not only to legal professionals, but also to the general public, the legal career of legal researcher is now rather redundant. The closest role now could possibly be that of law librarian in a small firm or Law College, for example.
One thing to remember before undertaking any form of legal research is that the law varies according to the country and state that you are in and which legal system is being used. Your legal research must take this into consideration; however, there are some general tasks that are performed in all legal searches which consist of:
1. Finding primary sources of law e.g. searching the Constitution, statutes, case law and regulations, or searching primary authority in a given jurisdiction.
2. Searching secondary authority for information on a certain legal topic. Secondary authorities are law reviews, legal dictionaries and encyclopaedias, together with legal treatise, for example.
3. The third task would be searching non-legal sources for investigative or supporting info.
Law libraries provide research facilities, and legal research skills are taught to first year students in law school. Lawyers often use electronic databases such as LexisNexis or Westlaw for their legal research requirements. There are some good free or low cost legal research portals called FineLaw and LexisOne which can be used for legal research and can often be accessed by the general public after a brief registration has been completed.
The basic legal research skills as taught to first year law students include the following points:
1. Clarify the issue to identify what legal issues you will need to research
2. Brainstorm the legal issues that you are researching and think of other terms that they might be indexed under. For example, assisted suicide could also be listed under euthanasia.
3. Determine the time frame for your research.
4. Decide if you want to use electronic/digital or print media for research. This is often dictated by the amount of time you have and what access you have to the different media.
5. Locate and read these secondary sources.
6. Locate and read the primary sources.
7. Look up any non-legal sources and materials, such as ethical issues and other procedures that may be relevant to your research.
8. If necessary, repeat the above steps until all your answers are located and your search completed.
Legal careers that include legal research are lawyers, law librarians, law students and paralegals. If you are looking for information on a legal career as a legal researcher then searching for information on one or more of these careers would be helpful. They all have a need for legal research as part of their working practices.
The closest match to a career as a legal researcher today is arguably that of a law librarian. Information on becoming a law librarian can be found on the website of The American Association of Law Libraries under their Education and Courses section: www.aallnet.org/services.
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