LEGAL RESEARCH Communicate results

What is Legal Research? 1. Present answers or results clearly and

concisely
The process of identifying and retrieving
information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its 2. Cite sources correctly and accurately
broadest sense, it includes each step of a course of action that
Purpose of Legal Research
begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and
concludes with the application and communication of the To find authority that will aid in finding a solution to a legal
results of the investigation. - J. Myron Jacobstein and Roy problem. - Cornell University Legal Information Institute,
M. Mersky, Fundamentals of Legal Research, 8th ed. Legal Research: An Overview
(Foundation Press, 2002) p. 1 Types of Authority
Steps in Legal Research PRIMARY AUTHORITY
Three Basic Steps Rules of law that are binding upon the courts,
government and individuals
1. Problem identification and analysis
Consists of the law itself, as expressed in the
2. Information search and retrieval
verbatim texts of the statute or case law
3. Communication of results
1. The Constitution
Identify & analyze the problem
The fundamental law of the land
1. Collect the facts
3. Statutes or statutory law
2. Classify the facts
4. Legislative enactments
3. Determine legal issue/s
5. Executive issuances
4. Identify the jurisdiction
3. Administrative or agency law
Search & retrieve information
Issued by agencies charged with regulating
1. Find materials relevant to your subject an area of conduct

1. Use finding tools Rules and regulations

2. Secondary, primary, rules 4. Case law

3. Traditional and electronic sources Decided or written opinions by

courts
Cases, 5. Muslim or Sharia law
jurisprudenc
e
Islamic law and customary
Statutes,
codes, rules law
Encyclopedi
Comprehensiv &
a, dictionary Embraces legal, social,
e Legal regulations
Research political and civil relations

Law Sources of Primary Authority

Reviews, Congression
Journals al debates The Legislative Branch

The Congress of the Philippines

1. Cross-reference materials for accuracy
Bicameral
2. Ensure materials are up-to-date o The Senate
o The House of Representatives
Legislative Enactments Hierarchy

Acts (1900-1935, 4,275)

International
Commonwealth Acts (1935-1945, 733) secondary

Republic Acts (1946-1972; 1987-2013, 10,606)

International
Mga Batas Pambansa (1979-1985, 884) [issued by Primary
the unicameral Batasang Pambansa]
Local
The Executive Branch Secondary

Office of the President

Presidential Decrees (Marcos 1972-1985, 2,034), Local

Executive Orders (Aquino, E.O. No. 136), Primary
Proclamations

Treaties and international agreements

*To jumpstart your research, you can start with International
Administrative Agencies: Orders, Rules, Rulings,
secondary or Local secondary
Memorandum Orders and Circulars
Classification of Law
Local government units: ordinances
BY APPLICATION
The Judiciary
Mandatory
The Supreme Court
Primary authorities: considered in making a
Rules of Court: Civil Procedure, Special determination in a legal matter
Proceedings, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Statutes, presidential issuances, international treaties
Summary Procedure, Small Claims Cases, and conventions, administrative rules and regulations,
Environmental Cases local ordinances, case law
Must be followed and must be cited first
Jurisprudence or case law: Decisions and
In case law, the principle of stare decisis et non quieta
Resolutions (1901 to the present, over 70,000)
movere (to adhere to precedents and not to unsettle
SECONDARY AUTHORITY things that are established) is applied
o Art. 8 of the Civil Code: Judicial decisions
Commentaries on the law that do not have binding
applying or interpreting the laws or the
effect but aid in explaining what the law is or should
Constitution shall form part of the legal system of
be
the Philippines.
Materials that analyze, explain, or criticize the law or Adherence to judicial precedents
that help find legal authority (finding tools)
Persuasive
Resources about the law and not the law itself
Considered when there is no mandatory
Secondary Authority authority on a subject matter

1. Legal encyclopedias Laws and decisions of other

jurisdictions
2. Legal dictionaries
Opinions of government agencies
3. Restatements
(BIR, DOJ)
4. Treatises
Executive interpretation of
5. Legal periodicals legislative enactments is
accorded weight by the
6. Practice materials judiciary
 Treatises, law review articles He would later paraphrase or copy the marked out
passages from some of these books as he typed his
Persuasive authorities may be cited
manuscript on a manual typewriter
BY SOURCE
Researchers relied only on books, periodicals, catalogues,
Primary looseleaf & other printed publications

Official records of the statute or case law as There was no single repository of complete legislative
published by the issuing agencies enactments, executive issuances, or jurisprudence

Secondary It took time and effort to have access to law-related

issuances
Published by private or commercial entities
The Advent of Technology
Primary Sources
With the advent of computers, however... most
1. Statutory law legal references, including the collection of decisions of the
Congressional records Court, are found in electronic diskettes or in internet
websites that offer virtual libraries of books and articles -
Official Gazette (O.G.) In Re Del Castillo, A.M. No. 10-7-17-SC, October 12, 2010
Pursuant to E.O. No. 200 (1987): newspapers Electronic Legal Research
of general circulation
The use of available technology, electronic devices
2. Case law and electronic media for legal research
Philippine Reports Used to be referred to as computer-aided legal
research
Official Gazette Gaining much ground in an increasingly technology-
Advanced Sheets driven legal profession

Secondary Sources Advantages of ELR

1. Statutory law Access to a large amount of legal information

a. Vital Legal Documents o Millions of pages of legal information, with
b. Commentaries, textbooks thousands added every day
c. Lex Libris Laws, Philippine Law Encyclopedia, Portable
Lawphil, Chan Robles o Device or media can be carried around easily
2. Case law Space-saving
a. Supreme Court Reports Annotated (SCRA) o Device or media can be as small as the palm
b. Supreme Court Advanced Decisions (SCAD) of ones hand
c. Lex Libris Jurisprudence Time-saving
o Search engines and customized search
Harnessing Technology for Legal Research templates can produce focused search
In the old days results, in seconds
o If you know how to search, you save even
the common practice was that the researcher more time
would source his materials mostly from available law books Information in electronic format is flexible and
and published articles on print. When he found a relevant more easily manipulated
item in a book, whether for one side of the issue or for the o Can be copied, edited and printed more
other, he would place a strip of paper marker on the easily
appropriate page, pencil mark the item, and place the book Information is easier to update and can be more
on his desk where other relevant books would have piled current
up o Files are easily processed and uploaded
Cost-effective
 o Cheaper in the long run; contains
considerably larger volume of materials
Choosing an Electronic Tool/Resource
Currentness
Is the database up-to-date? Is the
information up-to-date? When was
the site last updated?
Accuracy
What are the sources of the
information?
Are the materials faithful to the
originals?
Choosing an Electronic Tool/Resource
o Reliability/Credibility
Who is the publisher/administrator?
What is the publishers track record?
o Usability
Is the information properly
arranged? Does it have a subject
index?
How powerful is its search engine?
Does it come up with focused
results?
Holds a minimum of 4.7 GB of data, enough for a full-
length movie or app. 2 million text pages
The Internet
A massive network of computers linked together and
communicating with each other through a series of
protocols
A network of networks of computing devices
The World Wide Web (www)
The information sharing model built on top of the
Internet
A collection of interconnected documents linked by
hyperlinks and URLs (uniform resource locators)
Online Legal Resources
Free Sites
Non-commercial; access is free
There are over 200,000 sites on the web with legal
information
Examples of foreign sites
Cornell Legal Information Institute
www.law.cornell.edu
Findlaw www.findlaw.com

Types of Electronic Media Commercial Sites

Optical Media Subscription or pay-for-use sites: lexis.com, westlaw

A storage medium or device in which information, Password is required to access data

including sounds and/or images, or software code,
Contain features and tools that facilitate focused
has been stored, either by mastering and/or
research
replication, which may be accessed and read using a
lens scanning mechanism employing a high intensity
light source such as a laser or any such other means
as may be developed in the future. (Sec. 3 (i),
Republic Act No. 9239, The Optical Media Act of
2003)

Types of Optical Media

CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read-Only-Memory)

o Stores up to 700 megabytes of data, up to
300,000 text pages
o Made of plastic & aluminium, can last a long
time with proper use
o Once stamped, no additional information
may be added
DVD-ROM (Digital Versatile Disc Read-Only- Philippine Electronic Legal Research Resources
Memory)
Resources on Optical Media
PRIMARY SOURCES An electronic link providing direct access from one
distinctively marked place in a hypertext or
Case Law Supreme Court e-library (distributed to
hypermedia document to another in the same or a
courts)
different document (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Treaties Department of Foreign Affairs (Treaties of
Quick access to related or connected information
the Philippines)
SEARCH ENGINE
SECONDARY SOURCES
A computer software used to search data (as text or
Publications of private companies
a database) for specified information; also: a site on
Agoo Institute e-Library
the www that uses such software to locate key words
CD Asia publications in other sites (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
o The Philippine Law Library
General or site-specific search engines
o Legal Knowledge Titles
Used together with search templates and indexed or
o The Philippine Legal Encyclopedia Series
tagged information
Online Resources
SEARCH METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
Free Sites
1. Boolean Method - Of, relating to, or being a logical
Official Sites (Primary Sources) combinatorial system that represents symbolically
o The Official Government Portal of Republic relationships (as those implied by the logical
of the Philippines gov.ph operators AND, OR, and NOT) between entities (as
o Senate of the Philippines senate.gov.ph sets, propositions, or on-off computer circuit
o House of Representatives congress.gov.ph elements) (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
o Supreme Court website sc.judiciary.gov.ph 2. Proximity Searching
Privately-maintained sites (Secondary) Allows user to find terms that appear within a certain
o Lawphil number of words of each other
o Chan Robles User can specify the distance (number of words)
Commercial Sites between terms
o CD Asia Online www.cdasiaonline.com Proximity symbols
Contains Laws and Jurisprudence o ~: death penalty~5
eSCRA o Finds documents containing the words
death and penalty within five (5) words
Online Resources of each other
Distinctions o Ordered - /: death penalty/5
o Unordered - @: death penalty@5
o Search engine 3. Truncated or Wildcard Searching - allows searching
o Content for documents containing variations on a search
o Organization of information term
o Other features Truncation operators
Cross-referencing o = retrieves all entries containing the letters
Cited in before the * (replaces multiple letters)
COMMON FEATURES: Electronic Legal Research Tools o Constitut* - Constitution, constitute,
constitutional
SUBJECT INDEX o ? = replaces any character in a search term
o A list of topics arranged in alphabetical order o Wom?n woman, women
o Materials (i.e., legislation, court decisions, 4. Phrase Searching - use quotation marks ( ) to
executive issuances) covering the topic are capture two or more words as an exact phrase
listed Example : qualified theft, consummated felonies,
o The list items are usually linked to the national territory, breach of promise to marry,
complete text of the material 114 PHIL 77
HYPERLINKS
Other Techniques
 1. Fuzzy Searching - finds search terms even if they are
misspelled or do not match a search term exactly
(close matches)
2. Concept/Synonym Searching - Searches for related
concepts or synonyms

CONCLUSION

There are many resources available for legal

research.
o Exercise discernment in choosing research
resources and tools
o Use only resources that are reliable,
accurate and current
o For electronic legal research, look for
features that will help fine-tune your
research (i.e., search engines, query
templates, links)
It is worthwhile to invest in good legal research
resources.
o These will be the tools of your trade. Choose
the best.
o Using these resources results in exponential
increase in efficiency and productivity.
o Be experts as early as now.

Legal research has always been the unsung hero in

the study and practice of law. Though it has often been
relegated to a minor subject in most programs of legal
studies, it remains of vital importance to all scholars of the
law from the highest of magistrates to the beginning law
freshmen. It need not be emphasized that the outcome and
integrity of any decision, pleading, or thesis largely depends
upon the authors knowledge and skill in legal research. -
Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno (Ret.) Milagros Santos-Ong,
Philippine Legal Research (Central Book Supply, 2007)