Law Basic Primers

Some considerations when starting legal research:

• Searching for secondary sources is the first step in legal research.
• Secondary sources assist in first explaining and understanding the law and second, in locating the law.
• When getting started with a legal topic, reference sources like legal encyclopedias provide broad overviews of legal topics written by experts that will save time and direct you to primary sources. 
• Depending on how you search legal research tools they can provide a broad overview or very specific details. 
• There may be both legislation and court cases that will be relevant to what you need
• Jurisdiction - the geographic area that a particular law applies to - is a key consideration in legal research, for both legislation and case law.

Tutorials for: Secondary Sources (9 slides, 5'40"), Creating Legislation (9 slides, 11'42"), Legislative Research & Noting up (10 slides, 9'50"), Case Law Part 1 (7 slides, 5'43"), Case Law Part 2 (8 slides, 7'3")