Secondary Sources Of Law Essay

The difference between a mediocre attorney and a great attorney, is their ability to do great research. Researching anything is a process; thus, legal research is the process of finding which primary law applies to a client’s problem. There are certain guidelines an attorney must follow when researching in the field of law; their goal to win their case in court with only the research they found. There are also different sources of law that require different approaches to research. There are primary and secondary sources of law. Primary sources are actual law that must be followed. Secondary sources help an attorney discover the primary sources and explain their meaning. Some examples of primary sources are constitutions, statutes, regulations, common law and case law. Secondary sources of law are treaties, restatements of law, model codes, and legal encyclopedias (Putman, 13). An attorney will first look in the index of a secondary source, to discover a case law, which would reference a case concerning the topic at hand. If a person has a problem, that needs to be addressed in a court venue, it is likely that person will

Competence comes with the ability, of an attorney, to know where to find the answers to their client’s problem. Legal research is an attorney process of finding the key facts of the case, and applying them to the cause of action. It is researching good case law and matching it to the elements in the case. The hope of an attorney is to create an argument - in court - that is indisputable. A current law school student would be wise to set up an effective research process at the beginning their law career. This will help to facilitate any and all research in the future. The difference between mediocre and exceptional is the method, an attorney practices to do their legal