7.3 Gathering the materials: researching for your essay
For most essays in law school, some degree of research is expected. Some essays will be more research-intensive than others. Other essays can be reflections on material already covered in a subject. However, most of the time the essay task you are set will require you to do some research of your own.
‘Research’ is an ambiguous word. It can refer to original research, in which the researcher discovers new facts or information about some aspect of the world. The term can also mean finding out what other people have said (including their original research) about the issues you are concerned with. ‘Research’ in the context of writing undergraduate essays in law school usually means the latter, not original empirical studies of your own. Therefore, here we will focus on the second sense of ‘research’.
7.3.1 Why research?
The point of research is to help you gather support for the positions and arguments you present in your essay. A well-researched piece will be better informed and have more impact than one that contains a series of unsubstantiated or under-informed claims. A good research essay shows evidence of its author having engaged with relevant and appropriate materials, following appropriate research methods.
As part of your law course, you will be taught how to do specialised legal research in particular subjects. It is important to stress that legal research skills are professional skills that you will (or should) take with you into your legal careers. It is not just a skill for assessment purposes at university.
TIP: FRANKENSTEIN’S ESSAY
The purpose of an academic essay is usually twofold: it tests your understanding of a specific topic and it tests your research skills.
As such, you are unlikely to find an article, text or other source that perfectly answers your essay question. That would defeat the purpose of the exercise, since you would simply be finding out what someone else says is ‘the answer’ to the question. Instead, your task is to develop your own understanding of the topic and issues by feeding your mind with a variety of sources.
This means that you have to build your answer from multiple research sources, drawing together the different insights they offer and allowing you ultimately to make your final point. However, not every part of your essay has to come from someone or somewhere else. There will always be scope for you to use your own contributions and provide your own analysis. Indeed, better essays are rarely an assemblage of parts from others and instead digest and combine sources in original ways, with additional original thoughts. Like Dr Frankenstein, you should add your own mysterious spark to create something new from a collection of disparate parts.
7.3.2 Be careful with the research you rely on
Exactly what sorts of materials will be appropriate and relevant to research, and the particular research methods you should follow, will depend on the issues you are addressing in your essay. Seek guidance on these matters from your teachers. The library can also help, including maintaining and providing you with various research tools.
Generally, where the research involves finding out what others have said on the topic, it is not just anyone’s views that matter here but people with some claim to knowledge or ‘epistemic authority’, or at least something useful to contribute to the debate and discussion. In short, what makes a source credible in the context of your essay? In our online era, almost everyone can publish their views to the world. This means being able to discern the epistemically valuable wheat from the ill-informed chaff is particularly important and sometimes difficult.
When doing internet-based research, use your brain, not just your index finger. There is plenty of excellent material available online – and there is also a lot of junk and second- and third-rate stuff. You need to search intelligently and sort critically to figure out which is what. Many university students still have difficulty sorting out the good, the bad and the ugly online. Many students’ work suffers because the online material they gather in their ‘research’, while readily accessible, is low quality, derivative or intellectually flimsy (e.g. a blog post by someone lacking expertise, a tabloid newspaper article, a lobby group’s biased media release). Finding something on the internet that is connected to the topic is not sufficient reason to cite it or even use it in preparing your work.
TIP: USE APPROPRIATE DATABASES
Do not start your searches with Google or Wikipedia. Instead, start with your institution’s library catalogue search function and databases. Enter key words or phrases. Using the filter tools, limit your search to peer-reviewed articles or books within an appropriate date range, and you will immediately find more useful, credible sources than Google or Wikipedia can deliver.
7.3.3 More is not always better
Students sometimes think that lots of quotations and references or a long bibliography are the defining marks of a well-researched essay. But quantity is rarely enough and often not even necessary. Instead, much depends on the question, the kind of answer you are giving to it, the state of the relevant literature, the quality of the works referred to and what use you make of those works. Depending how these factors play out in a given case, an essay with only five very good references could be much better than an assignment on the same topic, and taking the same position, which has 25 references that are of low quality and which makes poor use of them. There is little to be gained in just amassing references.
7.3.4 Evaluating the sources found through your research
Not everything that your research yields will be equally useful, and even relevant sources can be useful in different ways. This means you will need to evaluate the sources you have found in your research. How do you do that? This is a large question, but here are a few questions to ask when you evaluate the fruits of your research.[1]
EVALUATING RESEARCH
What kind of document is it? Is it a journal article or a chapter from a book? If from a book, is it an introductory textbook for students or an academic monograph that presents original, cutting-edge research? Is the document perhaps merely an online pamphlet published by an organisation with a particular agenda?
Who is the author? What authority or reputation does the author have? What reputation does the publisher have? If you are looking at a journal article, what sort of reputation does the journal have?
Who is the intended audience? Is the text addressed to the general public? Practicing lawyers? University students? Other academics? Is the text restricted in its jurisdictional relevance? That is, is it only concerned with the law of a particular jurisdiction, with little relevance beyond that jurisdiction?
How current is the text? How up to date is the information within it? How accurate or reliable is the information?
What are the arguments being put forward by the text? Are they clear, cogent and persuasive? Do you feel justified in relying on or deferring to them?
- We draw here from Anita Mackay and Pascale Chifflet (eds) Legal Institutions and Methods (Lawbook Co, 2nd ed, 2021) [15.380]. ↵
