Canadian Secondary Sources

The bulk of the research that you conduct, both as a law student and as a practicing lawyer, will require the use of Canadian legal resources. As a result, it is important for you to become familiar with the major Canadian research tools. This chapter begins with a review of important Canadian secondary (background) legal resources, including textbooks, legal journals, encyclopedias, and case law digests. The following entries provide an overview of primary legal resources: Canadian case law and Canadian legislation.

Secondary Sources or Legal Resources in Legal Research

To skip to a specific section of this resource guide, click on a link in the outline below.

• Treatises
• Directories
• Handbooks, Practice Guides and Nutshells
• Encyclopedias
• Digests
• Dictionaries
• Indexes
• Associations
• Other Online Research Guides
• Helpful Links and Canadian search engines

Some Other Canadian Secondary Legal Resources

Textbooks

Checking textbooks on your topic is often a good way to start your legal research. In Canada, many lawyers, judges and academics write books about the law. The leading publishers of Canadian legal treatises include Butterworths, Canada Law Book, Carswell, CCH Canada and Irwin Law. Consider doing a keyword search using the library catalogue to identify books written about your chosen area of law. If you find an appropriate title, check the table of contents or index of the book to see if there is any discussion of your specific legal problem. Many law-related treatises are published in looseleaf binders, which are kept up-to-date through the insertion of supplementary pages.

Although never binding in court, some textbooks are written by scholars of outstanding reputation and prestige, and consequently engender considerable judicial respect. Not to be overlooked are texts written by currently sitting judges. In evaluating a text, it is useful to consider, among other things: the purpose for which it was published, the reputations of the author and publisher, the organization, scope and depth of research in the book, the book’s currency and its reviews.

Legal Journals

Law journals are often a good source of information since academics, lawyers and other experts in the field are the authors of the journal articles. An easy way to find relevant journal articles is to search an index of legal periodicals. Such indexes usually provide access to articles by subject, author or title. By searching various periodical indexes, you will find citations to full-text articles, case comments and book reviews. A relevant full-text journal article can, in turn, lead you to other sources through its bibliography and footnotes. Some Law Libraries website have a link devoted to finding law-related journals .

Resources

See Also

Primary Sources

Law is our Passion

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This entry was last updated: April 22, 2016