LEGAL RESEARCH 1.

Cross-reference materials for

accuracy
What is Legal Research?
2. Ensure materials are up-to-date
“The process of identifying and retrieving
information necessary to support legal decision-
making. In its broadest sense, it includes each
Communicate results
step of a course of action that begins with an
analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes 1. Present answers or results clearly
with the application and communication of the and concisely
results of the investigation.” - J. Myron
Jacobstein and Roy M. Mersky, 2. Cite sources correctly and
Fundamentals of Legal Research, 8th ed. accurately

(Foundation Press, 2002) p. 1 Purpose of Legal Research

Steps in Legal Research To find authority that will aid in finding a

solution to a legal problem. - Cornell
Three Basic Steps University Legal Information Institute,
Legal Research: An Overview
1. Problem identification and analysis
Types of Authority
2. Information search and retrieval
PRIMARY AUTHORITY
3. Communication of results
 Rules of law that are binding upon
Identify & analyze the problem
the courts, government and
1. Collect the facts individuals
2. Classify the facts  Consists of the law itself, as
expressed in the verbatim texts of
3. Determine legal issue/s
the statute or case law
4. Identify the jurisdiction
1. The Constitution
Search & retrieve information
 The fundamental law of the
1. Find materials relevant to your land
subject
3. Statutes or statutory law
1. Use “finding tools”
4. Legislative enactments
2. Secondary, primary, rules
5. Executive issuances
3. Traditional and electronic
sources 3. Administrative or agency law
 Issued by agencies charged with
Cases, regulating an area of conduct
jurisprud
ence  Rules and regulations
Statutes
Encyclop , codes, 4. Case law
edia, Comprehe rules &
dictionar nsive regulatio  Decided or written opinions
y Legal ns
Research by courts
Law
Review 5. Muslim or Shari’a law
Congres
s,
sional  Islamic law and
Journal
debates
s customary law
  Embraces legal,  Materials that analyze, explain, or criticize
social, political and the law or that help find legal authority
civil relations (finding tools)
Sources of Primary Authority  Resources about the law and not the law
itself
The Legislative Branch
Secondary Authority
The Congress of the Philippines
1. Legal encyclopedias
 Bicameral
o The Senate 2. Legal dictionaries
o The House of Representatives
3. Restatements
Legislative Enactments
4. Treatises
 Acts (1900-1935, 4,275)
5. Legal periodicals
 Commonwealth Acts (1935-1945, 733)
6. Practice materials
 Republic Acts (1946-1972; 1987-2013,
Hierarchy
10,606)
 Mga Batas Pambansa (1979-1985, 884)
[issued by the unicameral Batasang
Pambansa]
The Executive Branch
 Office of the President
International secondary
• Presidential Decrees (Marcos 1972-
1985, 2,034), Executive Orders International Primary
(Aquino, E.O. No. 136), Proclamations Local
Secondary
• Treaties and international agreements Local
Primary
• Administrative Agencies: Orders,
Rules, Rulings, Memorandum Orders and
Circulars
• Local government units: ordinances *To jumpstart your research, you can start with
International secondary or Local secondary
The Judiciary
Classification of Law
The Supreme Court
BY APPLICATION
 Rules of Court: Civil Procedure, Special
Proceedings, Criminal Procedure,  Mandatory
Evidence, Summary Procedure, Small  Primary authorities: considered in making
Claims Cases, Environmental Cases a determination in a legal matter
 Statutes, presidential issuances,
 Jurisprudence or case law: Decisions
international treaties and conventions,
and Resolutions (1901 to the present, administrative rules and regulations, local
over 70,000) ordinances, case law
SECONDARY AUTHORITY  Must be followed and must be cited first
 In case law, the principle of stare decisis
 Commentaries on the law that do not have et non quieta movere (to adhere to
binding effect but aid in explaining what precedents and not to unsettle things that
the law is or should be are established) is applied
 o Art. 8 of the Civil Code: “Judicial 1. Statutory law
decisions applying or interpreting the a. Vital Legal Documents
laws or the Constitution shall form part b. Commentaries, textbooks
of the legal system of the Philippines.” c. Lex Libris Laws, Philippine Law
 Adherence to judicial precedents Encyclopedia, Lawphil, Chan Robles
2. Case law
 Persuasive a. Supreme Court Reports Annotated
(SCRA)
 Considered when there is no b. Supreme Court Advanced Decisions
mandatory authority on a subject (SCAD)
matter c. Lex Libris Jurisprudence
• Laws and decisions of other Harnessing Technology for Legal Research
jurisdictions
In the old days…
• Opinions of government
agencies (BIR, DOJ) “…the common practice was that … the
researcher would source his materials mostly
 Executive from available law books and published articles
interpretation of on print. When he found a relevant item in a
legislative enactments book, whether for one side of the issue or for
is accorded weight by the other, he would place a strip of paper
the judiciary marker on the appropriate page, pencil mark the
item, and place the book on his desk where
• Treatises, law review articles
other relevant books would have piled up…”
 Persuasive authorities may be
“…He would later paraphrase or copy the
cited marked out passages from some of these books
BY SOURCE as he typed his manuscript on a manual
typewriter…”
Primary
Researchers relied only on books, periodicals,
 Official records of the statute or catalogues, looseleaf & other printed
case law as published by the publications
issuing agencies
There was no single repository of complete
Secondary legislative enactments, executive issuances, or
jurisprudence
 Published by private or commercial
entities It took time and effort to have access to law-
related issuances
Primary Sources
The Advent of Technology
1. Statutory law
“…With the advent of computers,
▪ Congressional records
however... most legal references, including the
▪ Official Gazette (O.G.) collection of decisions of the Court, are found in
electronic diskettes or in internet websites that
▪ Pursuant to E.O. No. 200 (1987): offer virtual libraries of books and articles…” -
newspapers of general circulation In Re Del Castillo, A.M. No. 10-7-17-SC,
2. Case law October 12, 2010

▪ Philippine Reports Electronic Legal Research

▪ Official Gazette  The use of available technology,

electronic devices and electronic media
▪ Advanced Sheets for legal research
Secondary Sources  Used to be referred to as computer-aided
legal research
  Gaining much ground in an increasingly
technology-driven legal profession
Advantages of ELR
 Access to a large amount of legal
information
o Millions of pages of legal
information, with thousands added
every day
 Portable
o Device or media can be carried
around easily
 Space-saving
o Device or media can be as small as
the palm of one’s hand
 Time-saving
o Search engines and customized
search templates can
produce focused search results, in
seconds
o If you know how to search, you
save even more time
 Information in electronic format is
flexible and more easily manipulated
o Can be copied, edited and printed
more easily
 Information is easier to update and
can be more current
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 publisher’s 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?
Types of Electronic Media
Optical Media
 A storage medium or device in which
information, including sounds and/or
images, or software code, has been
stored, either by mastering and/or
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-Memory)
 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 o The Philippine Legal
Encyclopedia Series
Free Sites
Online Resources
 Non-commercial; access is free
Free Sites
 There are over 200,000 sites on the web
with legal information  Official Sites (Primary Sources)
o The Official Government Portal of
 Examples of foreign sites
Republic of the Philippines – gov.ph
▪ Cornell Legal Information Institute – o Senate of the Philippines –
www.law.cornell.edu senate.gov.ph
o House of Representatives –
▪ Findlaw – www.findlaw.com congress.gov.ph
o Supreme Court website –
Commercial Sites
sc.judiciary.gov.ph
 Subscription or pay-for-use sites:  Privately-maintained sites
lexis.com, westlaw (Secondary)
o Lawphil
 Password is required to access data o Chan Robles
 Contain features and tools that facilitate  Commercial Sites
o CD Asia Online –
focused research
www.cdasiaonline.com
 Contains Laws and
Jurisprudence
 eSCRA

Online Resources
Distinctions
o Search engine
o Content
o Organization of information
o Other features
 Cross-referencing
 Cited in

COMMON FEATURES: Electronic Legal

Research Tools
Philippine Electronic Legal Research
Resources  SUBJECT INDEX
o A list of topics arranged in
Resources on Optical Media alphabetical order
PRIMARY SOURCES o Materials (i.e., legislation, court
decisions, executive issuances)
 Case Law – Supreme Court e-library covering the topic are listed
(distributed to courts) o The list items are usually linked to
 Treaties – Department of Foreign Affairs the complete text of the material
(Treaties of the Philippines)  HYPERLINKS
 An electronic link providing direct access
SECONDARY SOURCES
from one distinctively marked place in a
 Publications of private companies hypertext or hypermedia document to
 Agoo Institute – e-Library another in the same or a different
 CD Asia publications document (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
o The Philippine Law Library  Quick access to related or connected
o Legal Knowledge Titles information
SEARCH ENGINE
 A computer software used to search data
(as text or a database) for specified
information; also: a site on the www that
uses such software to locate key words in
other sites (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
 General or site-specific search engines
 Used together with search templates and
indexed or tagged information
SEARCH METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
1. Boolean Method - Of, relating to, or
being a logical combinatorial system that
represents symbolically relationships (as
those implied by the logical operators
AND, OR, and NOT) between entities (as
sets, propositions, or on-off computer
circuit elements) (Merriam-Webster
Dictionary)
2. Proximity Searching
 Allows user to find terms that appear
within a certain number of words of each
other
 User can specify the “distance” (number
of words) between terms
 Proximity symbols
o ~: “death penalty”~5
o Finds documents containing the
words “death” and “penalty” within
five (5) words of each other
o Ordered - /: “death penalty”/5
o Unordered - @: “death penalty”@5
3. Truncated or Wildcard Searching -
allows searching for documents
containing variations on a search term
 Truncation operators
o = retrieves all entries containing
the letters before the * (replaces
multiple letters)
o Constitut* - Constitution,
constitute, constitutional
o ? = replaces any character in a
search term
o Wom?n – woman, women
4. Phrase Searching - use quotation
marks (“ ”) to capture two or more words
as an exact phrase
 Example : “qualified theft”,
“consummated felonies”, “national
territory”, “breach of promise to marry”,
“114 PHIL 77”
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 author’s knowledge and skill in legal
research.” - Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno
(Ret.) Milagros Santos-Ong, Philippine Legal
Research (Central Book Supply, 2007)