"Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law" by Attorney Stephen Elias and the Editors of Nolo is another book in the huge legal library published by Nolo, a publisher that prides itself on making the law accessible to everyone.
During the preliminary analysis, one should identify all the facts and details of the people, place, and the acts involved besides familiarizing oneself with the related jargon. A proper understanding of all issues that is to be got via the research has to be made at the outset itself.
The above tasks can be time consuming and hence quite expensive if done by a qualified legal services provider in a country like the United States who charges tens or even hundreds of dollars by the hour. But the same work can be done very efficiently in countries like India for rates as low as one-fifth of what it costs in the US.
The next source of law is contained in constitutions and statutes.
Generally you can try to cope without legal researchers. Often there are times when you can learn how to do legal research on a certain topic and you might be quite successful at it. For instance, I once fought for saving some of the last wetlands in the San Francisco bay.
A person doing legal research in international environmental legal research will have to be familiar with the law in different countries as the regulation and implementation of the treaty terms are at the national level. One must also know about the various international agreements and their effects worldwide.
Actually during legal research, deciphering of legal citations and its creation can be very challenging and time consuming. Hence quite often this work may be outsourced to professional legal research outsource providers.
The United States Congress has given the Judicial Conference of the United States the authority to collect a fee for electronic access to information on a case. Thus all the individuals or agencies who register are charged a user fee.
Every court has clerks, and these days almost all the courts also have computer records of every case filed in the jurisdiction. You can ask a clerk to direct you to that computer. Once there, you do a simple search: "name of the company suing you."
While substantive periodicals are publications meant for an educated audience they contain illustrations and photographs and are made to look attractive with the objective to provide information in a general manner.
Another way that having some help with legal writing is by giving you the availability to spend more time developing a client relationship. One of the most important aspects of a lawyer's work is building trust with clients.
So to review, a case "citation" tells the judge that another judge has considered the point being raised and ruled a certain way. It says how the judge can check that, and the judge can consider whether he finds the opinion enlightening.