NOTE: Please visit Legal Research: Step by Step, 5th Edition for the latest edition.

The revised fourth edition of Legal Research: Step by Step is the newest update of this bestselling title. This comprehensive text-workbook helps paralegal and law clerk students identify legal issues, analyze fact situations, and navigate various legal resources in both paper and computerized forms.

The text incorporates recent changes to computerized legal research sources and discusses effective keyword searching—an essential skill for using online sources to find legal information. It also includes many precedents and screenshots to help readers easily navigate secondary sources such as Halsbury’s Laws of Canada. Students will further benefit from a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to answer a legal problem—from start to finish—using paper and computerized sources.

This revision primarily tackles changes to the interfaces of LawSource and Quicklaw with updated figures and descriptions that accurately reflect how these databases function. This text also now covers Lexis Advance Quicklaw, an entirely new platform with a different interface and method of finding information.

• Provides detailed instructions on how to use research tools, including keyword searches
• Guides the reader through an analytical process of solving a legal problem
• Offers clear, practical explanations of legal research basics, which mirror the information researched in paralegal and law offices
• User-friendly resource conceived and written for the novice researcher such as students at the community college level or as a training resource for law school students and articling students and for practising paralegals and junior lawyers
• Addresses recent changes in Internet research
• Provides a sample legal problem with clear step-by-step instructions on how to find the applicable law using paper and computerized sources
• Includes screenshot examples of actual searches from key websites including eLaws, Quicklaw, federal and Ontario government websites, Westlaw Canada’s LawSource, the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII)
• Provides in-depth discussion of secondary sources, including Halsbury’s Laws of Canada

Part I: Introduction to Legal Research
Chapter 1: The Basics of Legal Research

Part II: Sources of Canadian Law
Chapter 2: Statutes
Chapter 3: Regulations
Chapter 4: Cases

Part III: Thinking About Legal Research
Chapter 5: How to Analyze a Fact Situation
Chapter 6: Preparing for and Performing Research

Part IV: Working with Legal Research Sources
Chapter 7: Paper Research Sources
Chapter 8: Computerized Sources
Chapter 9: Computer Searches Using Keywords

Part V: Using a Legal Encyclopedia to Find a General Statement of Law
Chapter 10: Legal Encyclopedias—Paper
Chapter 11: Legal Encyclopedias—Computerized

Part VI: Finding and Updating Statutes, Regulations, and Cases
Chapter 12: Finding and Updating Statutes and Regulations
Chapter 13: Finding and Updating Cases

Part VII: Putting It All Together
Chapter 14: A Sample Research Problem: From Start to Finish
Chapter 15: Legal Writing

Appendixes
Appendix A: Standard Abbreviations for Commonly Used Report Series and Statutes
Appendix B: Law-Related Internet Sites

Glossary
Index

Chapter 1: The Basics of Legal Research