Lawyering Toolkit: Top Notch Skills Pack
Top Notch Skills Pack
Top Notch Skills Pack
How to stay ahead
Research Tools
Learning Inspiration
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Approaching Your Research Topic
Research Integrity
It is important to be aware of sensitivity of your research
- With research assignments you will need ethics approval
- Check in your workplace what the codes of conduct are
- There are guidelines for responsible use of materials, honesty and respect for participants in any of your research
- Core research misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, data protection, bad data management
For more information check
European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (2023)
Irish Universities Association National Research Integrity Forum
National Policy Statement on ensuring research integrity in Ireland (2019)
Research Misconduct Case summaries from the Office of Research Integrity US
The US federal government defines “research misconduct” as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP) in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results” (OSTP, 2000)
•Ireland has adopted the OECD “Best practices for ensuring scientific integrity and preventing misconduct” (OECD, 2007), the most serious of which are FFP.
Legal Research Hot Topics
Blogs and websites are great sources of what is trending
Searching Tools
Advanced Searching
To improve your searching, make sure you have searched using the correct legal terminology. Legal dictionaries and thesauri can help with this. Check synonyms and alternative terms before you start searching in the database.
In your searching you can use techniques such as phrase searching where you look for words as they appear together
Use the advanced search option in the databases if available. Be methodical in your approach to your search strategy.
Check if there is a topic or subject category in the database which can help you filter your search to specific resources
The legal databases have tabs for different source types eg Case law so when looking for a case, searching the case tab will restrict your searchto case law records only.
Source: With kind Permission of the Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health, School of Public Health, Brown University. Under a grant from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Citation Styles
EU Legal information Sources
Database Tools
Learning Tip
Always check you have the most up to date evidence. Use quality assured sources and case law to support your research.
Knowledge and skills you learn in one course or even another subject can be applied and even help you in other disciplines and research. Use your skill set holistically.
Advanced Databases
Research Writing Tools
American Bar Association
Ten Tips for Better legal writing
Grammerly
Grammerly Free writing app to make writing clear and effective
Law Society
Data Archiving Tools
Data Archiving Software Options
Use this site to look at top data archiving software, data archiving software awardees and compare software options.
International Resources
Creators
This guide has been created by Susan Boyle, Virginia Conrick, Ann O'Sullivan and Pattie Punch as a collaborative initiative through the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Irish Group.