This lesson covers a few of the primary research tools to which most large firms subscribe. There are of course many other resources that you can consult and you will likely receive training on the wider suite of sources available at your firm.

Types of legal research

You will likely be expected to carry out a broad range of legal research during a training contract. 

• This might be research into case law and the ways in which judges have historically applied legal principles. For example, you may have to summarise, or find commentaries on specific judgments (including court or tribunal judgments) and the remedies granted or penalties imposed in various scenarios. 
• You might be asked to provide high-level introductions to specific areas of law or insights into certain legal procedures (e.g. deadlines for court filings or Companies House submissions).
• You could be asked to research national or international legislation and other statutory provisions and summarise how these have been interpreted in practice. 
• You may need to look into changes in the law or carry out academic research into more ambiguous areas of the law. You may also be asked to find examples of market standard clauses or document templates.
• It is very likely that you will need to research into regulatory guidance and developments during a training contract. This includes guidance from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Financial Conduct Authority, the Competition Commission and more. 

Guidance and updates

Firms sometimes publish broad regulatory updates for clients and the general public; this is important, as clients will expect their lawyers to keep on top of pending/new regulatory developments likely to affect their businesses, whilst publishing articles can help firms to publicly demonstrate their knowledge and expertise. Note that the regulators responsible for new regulation typically publish detailed guidance on that regulation (as well as draft guidance before the regulation comes into force), including what companies need to do to comply. 

Selecting research sources

The sources that are most typically used in practice include:

• Primary sources: primary legislation (Acts of Parliament), secondary legislation (Statutory Instruments and Codes of Practice), regulations and case law.
• Secondary sources: sources that provide commentary on or relay information from primary sources, for instance journals, articles, practitioner texts (e.g. Chitty on Contracts), encyclopaedias (e.g. Halsbury’s Laws of England) and legal dictionaries.
• Databases: you can access both primary and secondary sources through databases such as Westlaw, Lexis Nexis and Practical Law (PLC).

Supervisors may well rely directly on your research when providing advice to clients, without first checking the veracity of your sources (some may also ask you to send them links to some or all of the sources you have used). It is therefore essential that the sources you use are reliable. By “reliable”, I mean:

• Accurate: sources such as Westlaw, Lexis Nexis, Practical Law, The Takeover Code and Halsbury’s Laws of England offer content that is written by professionals with a strong understanding of their respective fields and/or is based on primary source materials (such as case transcripts). These sources also tend to link to useful commentary on particular subjects. The same cannot be said for sources such as Wikipedia and blogs that appear following a basic Google search.
• Up-to-date: cases may be overruled or successfully appealed, and statutes are repeatedly amended and repealed. It is best to access cases and statutes through Westlaw or Lexis Nexis, as these sources clearly indicate whether cases or statutory provisions are valid and up-to-date. Conversely, Legislation.gov.uk is not always up-to-date, and hard copy books may have been published before certain legal developments occurred.
• Relevant: ensure your sources are relevant. For cases, check the level of the court when assessing the extent to which particular principles will be applied by other courts. Generally, the more senior the court, the stronger the authority. Also check that any regulations on which you are looking to rely apply in the jurisdictions that are relevant to your client’s circumstances.

Getting started

Different people approach research in different ways. You could consider starting with secondary sources, which tend to give a greater overview of a topic and thus a better understanding of the context of the issues you have been asked to research into. You can use these secondary sources to identify particular primary sources, which can then be used to help you subsequently home in on particular issues.

Make sure you stick to the question(s) that you have been set. It can be easy to go off on a tangent, but this could waste your supervisor’s (and your own) time and result in you missing a deadline. If a new question arises that could be relevant to the matter, this is always something you could mention at the end and ask whether the intended recipient would like you to undertake further research into that question.

Practical Law Company (PLC)

Practical Law Company (commonly referred to as “PLC”) provides a great starting point for research into a topic if you have little prior knowledge of that topic. It covers everything from high-level introductions to specific legal areas and legal procedures, to commentaries on specific cases, changes in the law and examples of standard clauses/document templates. 

There are thousands of practice notes, legal updates, case summaries and more written by law firms and industry experts on a huge range of topics, and these resources often point you in the right direction for more focused research, for instance by referencing relevant cases/statutory provisions/guidance notes.

Articles and practice notes can be a great starting point. These are typically concise, accurate, well-structured (with clear headings and a contents table), easy to understand and reliable. They also tend to contain dozens of “further reading” links throughout, giving you the opportunity to drill deeper into the areas of law that you have been asked to research. Just make sure that articles you are relying on are up-to-date and that there have been no further amendments to the law that could affect the veracity of the information provided.

Practical tip: PLC lets you subscribe to updates relating to specific practice areas, so this is something you could consider taking advantage of to help you keep on top of developments when moving to a new practice area.

Westlaw

Westlaw is generally more up-to-date than Legislation.gov.uk and Bailey, so is a good starting point for research into cases and legislation. 

Although this section focuses on Westlaw, Westlaw and LexisNexis have copyright for different sources, so it may be worth checking both databases when undertaking research. Other good sources for legal research include: FromCounsel (which collates advice from barristers on a broad range of legal topics) and books such as Chitty on Contracts and Trolleys. Note that Westlaw offers a number of training tutorials (including videos), so consider working through these.

Cases

For each case on Westlaw, you can typically access: a summary/digest, transcripts of a judgment, related commentary/journals/books, links to cases that were cited in that particular case and links to cases that have subsequently cited that case. This information can be accessed from the “Case Analysis” screen.

Practical tip: if you are downloading a case for your supervisor or a barrister engaged by your firm, be sure to check whether there is a certain version that they need, especially if it will be used as part of a court bundle (e.g. they may want only the version published in the Weekly Law Reports).

Legislation 

To access a statute, use the search functions on the “Legislation” tab. You can access the contents pages of statutes by clicking through the following path: “Legislation” (at the top) > UK: Public & General Acts (half way down the page) > browse by Year or Title > select Act.

From here, you can download parts of an Act. Once you go into the table of contents, you can tick the boxes of the relevant sections, then click “Download” (the envelope icon on the top right). “Advanced Search” (under the search tab within the Legislation section of Westlaw) lets you search for historic and prospective law, which can be useful if looking for legislation that has been superseded.

EU Law

To access EU law, click the “EU” tab at the top of the main Westlaw page and use the search functions to find EU cases, legislation, treaties, preparatory acts, information and notices.

Definitions 

To search for legal definitions, select “Index of Legal Terms” on the Westlaw homepage.

Narrowing your searches

Many firms pay a subscription fee to equip all its fee earners with Westlaw access and some firms try to recoup this fee by charging clients on a pay-per-use or pay-per-search basis. This means clients may be charged for each search that you carry out and each document that you download. Being able to search efficiently is therefore essential. Below are some pointers to help you carry out targeted searches.

Before submitting a search query, ensure that you have only ticked the types of sources that you are looking for (on the left-hand side) as this is likely to produce fewer results. For instance, you may only be looking for cases, legislation or journals (not all three).

If you click “List of Connectors” on the homepage, you can access a series of search terms that can be used to narrow your search results from the outset. The following are particularly useful search mechanisms (note that you need not include square brackets when carrying out your own searches; these have been used below in the interests of clarity):

• “[word word word]”: use inverted commas around a phrase to search for cases or articles that contain that particular cluster of words together.
• [word] /s [word] means find documents containing the two words in the same sentence.
• [word] /p [word] means find documents containing the two words in the same paragraph.
• [word] & [word] means find documents containing both words.
• [word] or [word] means find documents containing either of the words.
• [word] +s [word] means the first term must precede the second term within the same sentence.
• [word] +p [word] means the first term must precede the second term within the same paragraph.
• [word] /n [word] means the search terms must be within “n” words of each other (replace “n” with your desired number).
• [word] +n [word] means find documents in which the first term precedes the second term by up to “n” words (replace “n” with your desired number).
• [word] % [word] means find documents in which the first term is present but not the second term (this search mechanism can be used to deliberately exclude documents from your search results).
• Once you have carried out a search, you can click “Search Within Results” to further narrow down your results (although note that this option does not come up if you have selected the “Natural Language” search option on the homepage).

Practical tip: you can click “Show Terms in Context” after hitting search to access a short extract from each result showing the section(s) of the document in which your search terms appear.