How to Do Legal Research: A Step-by-Step Guide for Law Students in the Philippines

How to do legal research is a very common query for law students to practicing attorneys alike because it is an important skill to gain. It involves a systematic search for statutes, jurisprudence, legal doctrines, and other relevant materials to prepare for recitations and exams, and provide accurate legal advice.

Legal research is a skill every law student must master — from preparing for recitations to drafting case arguments. Thus, effective legal research and knowledge on what the legal research process is all about requires two things: A structured approach and the maximized use of reliable research tools. 

In this guide, you’ll learn the step-by-step legal research process in the Philippines, including tools like Digest PH that make research faster and reliable.

What Is Legal Research and Why Is It Important in the Philippines?

Legal research is the systematic exploration of available legal resources to support a legal position, understand complex legal problems, and apply prevailing case law. 

For law students, legal research is important in writing positions papers, preparing for exams and recitation, and sharing accumulated knowledge with your professors. Bar takers do legal research to stay updated on prevailing jurisprudence to help their review. 

Lawyers on the other hand rely on legal research to support their legal arguments, strengthen their positions (or oppositions), and efficiently draft legal documents. The importance of legal research is further emphasized in the practice of Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) which requires lawyers to “keep abreast with law and jurisprudence” by attending several sessions on legal updates.

What are the Steps in the Legal Research Process (Philippines)

Step 1: How to Identify Legal Question

The first step in legal research is to clearly define the research question or legal issue involved. This can range from interpreting a certain provision, analyzing a case, to exploring a new legal doctrine. This helps streamline all your legal research efforts and limit questions to ask your chosen legal resource.

Step 2: Where to Gather Legal Sources

Utilize online databases with advanced search techniques and useful features. This will enable you to make the most out of your legal research, saving you both time and effort. Need a more thorough discussion on legal basis in research? Feel free to read up on our other article: A Guide to Finding Legal Basis in Your Research.

Step 3:  How to Analyze and Synthesize Legal Information

Analyzing and synthesizing your legal research findings starts with dumping all the information in one file. To avoid cramming, start creating a citation list, using the proper citation format and style according to the conventions of legal writing. 

Step 4: How to Organize and Format Research Findings

This last step ensures that you can reference back to your research with ease especially for exams, recitations, or case presentations. Use headings to divide your research among main concepts and highlight or make bold important information to retain. 

As for cases, you can also opt to make a digest per case to make analysis & summarizing easier.

Resources for Legal Research in the Philippines

One more important step to get over in legal research is determining what types of sources are available to help choose which ones to use. Below are just two of the main types: primary and secondary.

Primary Sources

Primary sources include statutes, regulations, and case law — otherwise stated, these are products of bodies with the authority to make, interpret, and apply the law. You could use reliable legal online databases. Make sure to consider two things:

1. Consider relevance and authority 

Carefully analyze and evaluate their relevance to the legal question and binding authority. Check out official websites of administrative agencies and most especially, the Supreme Court.

2. Cross-reference 

Make sure to cross-reference and compare multiple primary sources to ensure accuracy and completeness.

Secondary Sources

While you already have primary sources, make sure to consult secondary sources as well, or those materials that further discuss, explain, analyze, and critique the law, examples of such are legal encyclopedias and law review articles. These resources provide valuable insight on the law involved, helping to frame the research question and identify relevant primary sources.

Practical Tips for Effective Legal Research in the Philippines

Learning how to do legal research properly is a tricky endeavor to start. Follow these simple tips to make it easier:

• Use prevailing jurisprudence

The Supreme Court can overturn prevailing case law with new decisions. As such, always stay updated with the new cases to ensure that your sources are still good law.

• Highlight readings & cases

Legal research is made easier if you can summarize all your findings. Highlights aid with this since it only emphasizes information that you should take note of. 

• Cross-Check with the Law

Always make sure that you counter-check all your findings with legal provisions. If you are working online, you can check Digest PH’s legal database or its case digest collections.

Using Digest AI to Make Legal Research Easier

While legal research is a most used skill in both law school and in the professional field, it can definitely be time-consuming. Aside from having to manually search cases, you have to compile your learnings and analyze them. To solve such, you can opt to rely on online legal tools such as Digest AI to make legal research easier.

Digest AI can help with numerous tasks, including but not limited to the following:

• Creating case summaries

• Ask for case details using a G.R. No. or a case title

• Generate a recit-friendly answer to your queries

While switching from manual or traditional legal research may be intimidating at first, it is ensured that Digest AI complements, instead of replaces, your physical codals & SCRAs. The only difference is it is way faster and more efficient when you use Digest AI.

Key Takeaways 

• Legal research is a systematic search for legal materials—statutes, jurisprudence, doctrines—to support legal positions and understand complex issues.

• There are two types of legal sources: primary and secondary sources.

• Main steps in legal research are: determination of research question, gathering of legal sources, analysis of findings, and formatting of the information.

• Make sure to: Use updated jurisprudence, highlight and summarize, cross-check with legal provisions.

Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is legal research in the Philippines?

Legal research is the systematic exploration of available legal resources to support a legal position, understand complex legal problems, and apply prevailing case law.

Why is there a need for legal research?

There is a need for legal research because legal arguments, resources, and review materials for the bar must be updated with the prevailing legal interpretations & case law.

What is the difference between legal research and academic research?

Legal research pertains more to providing support to legal arguments while academic research focuses more on informative exploration.

Conclusion

Legal research is an important skill for both lawyers and law students and thus, knowing how to do it properly is of utmost importance. Learn more about legal research and legal research databases here.