As I posted yesterday, this is the first of two posts containing short reference documents I put together to consolidate the information I gained through lectures on finding legal material. This document concerns finding legislation.

Feel free to comment and add your own resources/tips and reuse this document under the terms of the CC license this site uses.

Types of legislation

Primary

Acts of Parliament or Statutes
Public General Acts – Apply nationally
Local/Personal Acts – Apply to an individual/locality
Debates published in Hansard
Green Papers – Consultative documents
White (Command) Papers – Policy documents
Orders in Council
Delegated

Statutory Instruments – made under the authority of statute
Other rules, codes, orders with the force of law
Locations of legislation

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In order to find the text of legislation back in “The Day” you would have had to look in the library and find so called “books” with the text in, and even then it might be difficult to find the very latest version and the text may not have any helpful annotations. Nowadays this task is much easier with the use of the internet and Google. But whilst Google is handy to confirm a fact or get a quick copy of the legislation, for full, authoritative versions with additional information about citations, ammendments and various other notes you need to look elsewhere.

Right now, “elsewhere” will be databases such as Lexis Nexis, Westlaw and the Justis. Unfortunately these are subscription based services but since my university pays for access to them I shan’t consider any other resources for the moment. In a few months the Statute Law Database will become available which will provide access to the legislation for everyone for free. I am part of the final phase 3 test user group and shall be reporting my findings in due course (i.e. when I get around to testing it in amonst my vast amount of reading and preparation tasks).

One of the first things I have learnt from the law school is how and where to find both legislation and case material. Across a few lectures we have been introduced to the services available and I decided to consolidate the information provided into two handy documents I now have stuck on my wall. And I am going to share these online and open them for comment, feedback and improvement (assuming anyone who is reading has the time to do so!).

As such, my next two posts tomorrow and Wednesday will be these documents typed out for all and any to use. And because the content on this blog is licensed under a very unrestrictive CC license, you can pretty much do with them as you please so long as you mention me! But if you do improve them I would appreciate any feedback.

Why bother blogging?

Barely a day goes by without an entry being posted on one of the blogs I read (see side bar right) about a new blog, the impact of blogging, a controversial blog or something to do with legal blogging. So it’s clearly something that is being done more and more. Just look at all the blogs in this directory.

Back in the old days, just having a blog was good enough to get readers, but that is no longer the case. Anyone can set up a blog and post about random stuff each day. In order to get readers and to keep them coming back you need to offer good content that is well written, covers topical issues or analyses well known ideas in a different way and is kept up to date. Often people will set up a blog with a great idea for their first post and then not have any idea as to what to write from then on. That is a danger and despite what people might think, it is quite difficult to think of fresh and engaging content continually.

Luckily, like quite a few subject areas, the law is a great topic to blog about because there is a lot of content available for inspiration. There are court cases going on all the time and the news is a great source for that. Equally, as a law student I am learning new things each day I have a lecture or seminar and I can have fun analysing that new knowledge in the context of what I knew (or didn’t know) already. I have yet to do that because I have yet to encounter something that is worth commenting on, but I do expect to reach that pretty soon (lectures so far this week have been more introductory and seminars start next week).

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The point of a degree course is to learn more about a specific subject – in great detail. If it’s a subject, like Law, that you may not necessarily have studied already, then it is quite acceptable if you know nothing about the subject. That’s what you’re at university for, right?

Maybe. I think it depends on the subject. Take Medicine for example. This is an extremely complicated and intense course and there really isn’t that much you could do before starting the course. Apart from study Biology and Chemistry. But even then I imagine there’s still not much you could do to get a “general overview” of the subject, so to speak. Indeed, how do you get a general overview of Medicine? Is it even possible? With Law, on the other hand, I would suggest that it is possible to find out a good amount even before you start the subject. At least find out about how the system works in general.

The lecture I had today was an introduction to the legal system, more focusing on what we’re going to be doing as part of the “Legal Process” module – visiting court, learning about the UK legal system and exactly how it works. I’m sure this module is going to go into great detail on this (as with anything at university) but there’s basic knowledge that you could have obtained even before studying the module. Particularly if you knew you were going to be learning about it e.g. before the lecture or even before coming to uni to do law in the first place. I’m talking specifically about how the UK courts system is structured, the difference between the criminal and civil courts and various other small bits if information. It only takes half an hour or so to read a few pages from a book, do some research, visit wikipedia and build up a foundation that the lecture will build upon.

Obviously, I’m not saying here that it is a requirement to have detailed knowledge about these kinds of things – that’s what the course is there for – but even so, the number of people in the lecture who didn’t have a good idea of what happens in the courts was surprising. Or maybe they just weren’t confident enough to say when asked. At least I hope that’s that case.

So far I have implied that I am actually a current Law student and since this blog was started during the summer it could be assumed that I was in my 2nd or maybe 3rd year. However, I am actually just this week starting my first week of proper study in my 1st year.

A week yesterday I arrived on campus to begin studying the law at an undisclosed university in the UK. Last week was Fresher’s Week which involved a lot of drinking, parties and meeting new people. But amongst all that fun we also had some introductory lectures. These included receiving the module outline booklets for the 5 modules that I shall be studying this year:

• A Critical Introduction to Law
• Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Criminal Law
• Legal Process
• Obligations I

One of the lectures in Fresher’s Week included writing a 45 minute essay titled “What is law?“. This was strange because I was intending to write a post here with that exact title, but ended up deciding not to. I enjoy writing on topics like this and after a little bit of preparation the night before, I had some good ideas that I was able to put into a structured essay for the lecture.

And today I shall be attending my first lecture that is not just an introduction to the subject/course/university as a whole. In fact this week I am not on full timetable but instead will have several lectures to introduce various key skills required to study the subject:

• Going to Court
• Introduction to Statutory Interpretation
• Introduction to Reading Legal Cases

Although Fresher’s Week was good, I have been really looking forward to actually starting the subject – I got quite excited last week when the modules were introduced. I can’t wait to actually start!

I have all my books that I need for the first year on my shelf:

• Gary Slapper & David Kelly, The English Legal System (8th ed), Cavendish, 2006
• Herring, J., Criminal Law: Text, Cases and Materials (2nd ed), Oxford University Press, 2006
• Ashworth, A., Principals of Criminal Law (5th ed), Oxford University Press, 2006
• Ewan McKendrick, Contract Law: Text, Cases and Materials (2nd ed), Oxford
• Mindy Chen-Wishart, Contract Law, Oxford University Press, 2005
• Blackstone’s Statutes on Contract, Tort and Restitution 2006/7

These are very heavy and very thick, but do look quite interesting. So I am also looking forward to being able to use them properly to do legal research, especially since the total cost from Amazon.co.uk was £170!

So far university has been very relaxed, although expensive. Accomodation for the first year is £4036.36 self catered. Added to that £3000.00 for the year for the topup fees and you’re looking at about £7000.00 just to go and have somewhere to stay. My timetable has yet to be finalised with my full quota of lectures and seminars but I will now be able to pick up the rate of posting since I will actually have some content to comment on. I’m hoping to post again this evening after the first lecture.

I also have a strange urge to do some of my own research into my topic of particular interest – intellectual property and technology law – since these are not covered as separate modules in the first year, or even at all in the case of technology law. But what do I look into? What can I research?