Skip to Main Content
Libraries
askus Ask us
 

Legal research and writing

This guide provides an introduction to legal research and writing for law students.

Problem analysis

This page will help you analyze the legal problem you are going to research and help you identify the points your research will need to address.

Analyzing your legal research problem

To analyze your legal research problem means to think about what it is asking.

For some legal research problems this is straightforward such as finding cases that consider an identified legislation section, or finding the current BC cases on an already narrowed specified point.

For other legal research problems you will have to analyze it. In general, the following procedure is useful:

  • Read your legal research problem carefully.
  • Identify the relevant facts, including the appropriate jurisdiction(s)
  • Identify the general area(s) of law involved: e.g., criminal, constitutional
  • Identify the issues
  • Consider and state any legal principles you already know that apply to these issues

You can refer to your LRW course materials or one of the Research Guides listed in this one for fuller discussions of how to analyze legal research problems.

Selected Resources

Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.