Case Confidence

Cases research is foundational to the practice of law in common law jurisdictions, particularly for litigators. Understanding how judges have interpreted and applied statute informs every legal decision, matter, and strategy.

Broadly speaking, this requires:

•   in-depth comprehension of complex information including case law, legislation, and guidance;

•   access to accurate, up-to-date content; and,

•   the capability to find all relevant cases, analyse each to determine its importance, and see the big picture.

Your client’s case—as well as your professional success and standing—depend on getting this correct, but two things stand in your way. First, the abundance of case law you must sift, sort, and assess. Second, the need for efficiency. It is essential to be thorough, but you cannot spend endless hours on research.

This is true for lawyers in law firms large and small, barristers, the judiciary, law students, professors, and in-house lawyers at companies and public-sector agencies. Regardless of their setting or role, lawyers need confidence the case research they rely on is complete, current, accurate, thoughtfully evaluated, and efficiently produced.

Perfecting this process is a make-or-break challenge. Everything you do depends on it.

Time, resources, and other pressures

Researching case law used to mean long nights in the library poring over stacks of law reports. Today, online legal databases deliver a massive volume of information directly to the researcher’s computer screen, but it’s too much information. Finding the gems in this mountain of material is a monumental challenge.

Often times, this labour-intensive mining expedition unearths a long list of citations and search results that provide neither clarity nor confidence. How can you be sure the most relevant and authoritative case law is identified? Deciding what to include or omit and when to stop the research process is daunting. Missing an important argument or including one that is off-target—or given too much or too little weight—will adversely affect the analysis and the legal strategy that is ultimately settled upon. It also will adversely affect the reputation of the responsible lawyer, law firm, or legal department.

This work is arduous, time-consuming and, for law firms, often not reimbursed—which creates great pressure to be as efficient as possible. To frame it another way, essentially, legal research is a constraint that introduces cost, time, and risk. A firm may absorb the cost or cap the number of hours spent on research—and potentially impact profitability or the quality of the legal work.

At the same time, a research project’s scope and scale may expand unexpectedly, creating delays and increased costs. For example, matters that are found to span multiple jurisdictions or involve conflicting laws often require more extensive investigation than anticipated. Or there may be a need to assess judges who will oversee a case to determine how they have ruled in similar cases and what arguments they have found persuasive.

In many practice groups, foundational legal research is delegated to junior colleagues, which, while valuable for training and development, necessitates oversight by senior colleagues.

Meanwhile, greater competition in the legal services market and increased client price sensitivity has increased pressure on law firms, while corporate legal departments face increased workloads and stagnant or diminished resource levels due to external forces. These include business and economic disruptions, the quest for growth and profitability, growing regulatory complexity, and the need to provide greater strategic guidance to their organisations.

In this environment, efficiency and excellence in legal research are paramount—which requires lawyers to deliver thorough, accurate, timely research in less time.