LEGAL RESEARCH

ATTY. PRISCILLA ELIZEL M. PASCUA-TAN, R.N.

-UNIVERSITY OF BATANGAS-
REFERENCE:

 MILAGROS SANTOS-ONG (2019)

LEGAL RESEARCH AND CITATIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES

 Abad, R. A. (2009)
Fundamentals of Legal Writing

 OTHER RELATED REFERENCE

It is important to learn the basics of Legal Writing in relation to the
study of Legal Research. In this lecture, the students are expected to be
able to identify the legal dispute in a case, identify the Stages of
Writing and the Facts of the case.
THE LEGAL
DISPUTE
 THE LEGAL DISPUTE

There is Legal Dispute when one party complains of a violation of his right
by another who, on the other hand, denies such violation.

A legal dispute in this sense is akin to a CAUSE OF ACTION in a civil suit

in which the defendant denies the claim against him. It is this denial that
tenders a legal dispute.
 THE LEGAL DISPUTE

When a person renting an apartment allegedly could not pay the agreed monthly rents yet
refuses to leave his unit, a legal dispute arises.

This consists of
a. The apartment owner’s claim that the tenant fails to pay the agreed monthly rents yet
refuses to leave his unit and
b. The tenant’s denial of the claim.

You have in this case, a right protected by law, an alleged violation of such right and a
denial of the allegation – a legal dispute.
 THE LEGAL DISPUTE

The right claimed to have been violated must, be a legal right since courts will uphold and
vindicate only those rights which are established or recognized by law.

Significance of Identifying Legal Dispute in Legal Writing and Legal Research

Since a Legal Dispute involves a violation of a right protected by law or which violation the
law punishes, nothing less than the resolution of such dispute could properly end it. Precisely,
we say that a legal dispute is at the heart of every case subject of legal writing because it is like
a tumor that would not go away until it is excised. Consequently, if you fail to correctly
identify the legal dispute and address it, you would just be running around in circles,
contributing nothing to its final termination.
THE LEGAL DISPUTE

Legal Dispute and the Principal Issue

As a rule, the legal dispute, recast in the format of an issue

provides the principal issue in every case. In the earlier case
about the tenant, the principal issue is “whether or not the tenant
fails to pay the monthly rents yet refuses to leave his unit”.
 THE LEGAL DISPUTE

IMPORTANCE OF PRINCIPAL ISSUE

Why is knowledge of the principal issue important to you?

It is important to you because your case will be decided for or against you based on that
issue. It is important because you judge the significance of every argument that you
want to use to persuade your reader by its relevance to the principal issue.

Any argument that does not touch the base with the principal issue or issues (there
could be more than one principal issue involved n a case) would be quite useless and a
waste of time.
STAGES OF
WRITING
 STAGES OF WRITING

Legal writing when methodically done is much like

constructing a building. You move in stages. You gather all the
materials you need, sort them out , cut them to size and join them
together according to a plan. Before you end, you then give your
building the finishing work it requires.
 STAGES OF WRITING

TWO STAGES OF LEGAL WRITING

1. PRE-WORK
Here , you are at the beginning of your writing assignment and are looking at the
facts and evidence of the case as they are made available to you. If it is a new case, the
facts might come from interviews of the persons involved in the problem or from related
documents that require sorting. These materials would be absolutely raw. Quite often,
the dates when the important events took place are mixed up. On the other hand, if it is a
case that has undergone trial, you might be looking at the transcript of the testimonies of
witness ad the documentary exhibits presented in the case.
 STAGES OF WRITING

Pre-work is a process. Whatever your assignment might be your pre-work

would be inadequate unless you go through at least five levels of efforts:

1. Establishing where the legal dispute lies in the case

2. Discovering its relevant facts
3. Knowing the laws or rules that apply to it
4. Identifying the issue or issues that you would address and
5. Roughing out the arguments that you would use.
 STAGES OF WRITING

2. WRITE-UP
Here, having all the ideas you need concerning your legal writing
assignment, your task is to put flesh, color and shape to them. You will now
transform the sketches and outlines you produces during pre work into a full
draft of the paper required of you- a pleading, a legal opinion, a petition, a
comment, a memorandum, a position paper or even a decision.

Editing and rewriting will complete the write-up stage.

 STAGES OF WRITING

VALUE OF PRE-WORK
Most haphazardly finished legal writing can be traced to lack of pre-work or
to pre-work hastily done. The need for pre-work is true for all kinds of
presentations that are aimed to convince others to a certain point of view. A
successful salesman needs to have complete knowledge and mastery of his
product, all its good points and bad. With this edge, he can then develop his
sales pitch or the line of arguments he could draw from, polish them to
perfection and ,make a sale. In real sense, legal writing is a sort of
presentation.
 STAGES OF WRITING

Lack of time to do pre-work, a frequent excuse, cannot be a valid

justification for dispensing with one. The writer who settles for an opinion,
pleading or position paper not based on pre-work does not care about the
comprehensiveness and convincing quality of his work. He just submits his
work to his client or to the court for the sake of meeting the deadline given
to him. He does not care about its result. This attitude, however, is the
reason behind many failed legal writings and careers. You do not want this.
GETTING AT THE
FACTS OF THE
CASE
FACTS OF THE CASE

Almost always, legal writing stands on two legs; the facts and the laws involved in the case; and pre-
work always starts with getting the facts right.

FACTS OF A CASE
When you study the facts of the case, you should not leave them until you have come to
a complete understanding of what the case is about from every angle. When you are
able to examine the position of the opposite side just as you have examined that of your
client, you would be able to tell the latter that you know more about his case than he
does. You short-change your client when you casually read the facts from your source
materials without truly understanding and absorbing their contents. Deep concentration
and absorption is required of every good preparation for a case.
 FACTS OF THE CASE

RANDOM NOTES VERUS SUMMARY

One way to study case material is to make short random notes of the facts of the case that
you consider important as you go over them. This is a good practice. But purely random
notes do not give you the complete picture. Because they are random, they are often
uncorrelated and are , therefore , useful only for work done in one sitting. When you set
aside your work and return to it after a long duration, your random notes would have lost
their correct meaning and you have to start all over again. You would never be able to use
these incomplete notes as a permanent catalogue of the facts that you want to go back to
repeatedly at various stages of the proceedings in a case.
FACTS OF THE CASE

What you need is systematically prepared notes that adequately capture the
entire factual terrain of the case, with the important points properly marked
out. Studies in some English colleges show that there is a better way than
taking random notes for absorbing complex or difficult texts or written
materials. It is summarizing. You can best understand and absorb written
materials when you summarize their contents. Your summary serves as a
detailed map in your hand, able to guide you in negotiating your way through
the dispute involved.
 FACTS OF THE CASE

Summarizing to compress the information you need , forces you to search

your materials for what is important. It compels you to toss an item of fact
over in your mind, assess its importance to the issues in the case, and decide
whether to keep it in or throw it out of your summary. When you come to an
item of fact and ask yourself “ What is the significance of this fact to this
case?” , you begin to wonder. Then, all your accumulated knowledge and
experience bear on that item of fact and usually your mind produces the right
answer.
-THE END-
 CHAPTER 3 – LEGAL SYSTEM

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