This online tutorial provides an introduction to the structure of primary and secondary legal materials and how to find them efficiently. It was designed to support the Research & Mooting Skills programme, which is compulsory for all first year undergraduates in the Faculty of Law. Oxford Law students will find information about the course on Canvas.
The Overview section explains how primary legal materials such as legislation and case law are developed and cited. It also provides a succinct overview of the legal research process.
The Finding Legal Materials section supports Unit One of the LRSMP and provides a guide to finding case law, legislation, journal articles and books both in hard copy and on the databases (mainly Lexis and Westlaw).
The Subject Research section supports Unit Two and provides a guide to conducting legal research from scratch. This includes a closer look at the legal research process, how to conduct subject searches on the databases and in hard copy using terms and connectors. It also looks at using case citators and evaluating materials. Finally there is a guide to using the online version of Halsbury's Laws of England and other online key texts. At the moment the pages are not complete as we are reviewing material but we hope to have this section finished shortly.