Figure 8.2 Legal research report template

RESEARCH REPORT

CLIENT:          CHL
MATTER:         Purchase of 1 Dove Lane

DATE:         1 October 20XX

CLIENT’S OBJECTIVES

Your list of the client’s known objectives (see 9.2.1.4 for a practice-based example of this). 

LEGAL ISSUES

Your own summary of the legal issues that you cover in your report. You may have been given these issues to research or you may have had to deduce them yourself by analysing the facts and the legal problems arising out of them (again, see 9.2.1.5 for a practice-based example of this, and how the ‘legal issues’ differ from the ‘client’s objectives’).

This is where you explain your legal reasoning; how you reached the ‘answer’ that you will be setting out in your conclusion. This is the main part of your report where you will detail how the law applies to the facts of the legal issue. You should follow the guidance in 9.2.3 as to how to apply the law to the facts effectively, and the guidance in 14.2.1.11 as to how to write clearly and concisely. Your explanation should be easy to read and it should refer expressly to the facts of the question.

You must identify the primary source(s) of law here. It is good practice to include details of the relevant ratio of a case (see 5.1 and figure 7.5) and/or the text of the relevant parts of the legislative provision. Do not simply copy out chunks of legislation or judgment though: cite only that which is relevant. Occasionally it may be helpful to attach extracts of the primary source, but again only attach relevant extracts. In general, however, be cautious about attaching extracts. Practitioners, with some displeasure, recount tales of junior lawyers having been asked to undertake research and presenting their supervisor with a sheaf of photocopied extracts from primary and secondary sources. Legal research is not limited to finding sources of law: it is about identifying which sources of law are relevant for the purpose of a specific task. If you have been asked to report the results of your research, expected that it should feature not only knowledge and refer to sources but also analysis and application of the law (with regard to structure and communication). These words will be familiar to you from undergraduate assessment criteria, and they remain important in practice.

There is little value in providing a chronological guide as to how you conducted your research. In following our recommended research strategy (Figure 8.1) you will have used the ‘funnel approach’ (see 8.1.5) when conducting your research, starting with a secondary source then progressing to the primary source. This will have helped your understanding. However your report should take the opposite approach and detail the primary sources first, as they are the main source of law, in which your reader will be interested, as would any judge in court. This might be case law only, or legislation only, or it may be both. (You can reference the secondary sources later, in your research trail, to support your citation and application of the primary source here.)

Subheadings can be used well here, for clarity and structure. For example, if you have a Sale of Goods business-to-business question, you could use three separate subheadings, one for s13 SGA 1979—correspondence with description, one for s14(2) SGA—satisfactory quality, and one for s14(3) SGA—fitness for particular purpose, assuming they are all relevant to the question asked. Consider how best to format your subheadings consistently (for example, if your headings are in bold, consider using underline for subheadings. There is no set way to format, but each level should be consistent).

CONCLUSION AND ADVICE

Here you provide ‘the answer’ to the client’s problem (see 9.2.4 for a practice-based example of this). You should aim to provide as unequivocal a conclusion as you can. It takes confidence to do this. Do not ‘hedge your bets’ or be inconsistent if a clear answer is available on the facts. Students often use language such as ‘it seems that it might’ or ‘probably’. If this is to express a genuine doubt that exists, having applied the law to the facts correctly, then identify what further information you need in order to advise definitively, and resist the temptation to advise prematurely. However do not use evasive language simply because you are not confident that your answer is correct. Make sure you use the facts properly here too. Do not say ‘If X is Y’ if the facts are clear that X is Y; say ‘As X is Y’ instead. To avoid these pitfalls, resist the temptation to start writing up your research using the template until you have fully researched the matter and have found the answer.

Your conclusion as to the effect of the law must be clear, complete and progress the matter as far as is appropriate:

• It should be clear enough so that your supervisor (or you) could cut and paste substantial parts of it into an email or letter to the client (with appropriate changes to accommodate the different needs of the new recipient).
• You should not include explanatory detail, such as citing your authority, here in the conclusion. Supporting detail is very important, but you will have included the main primary sources in the ‘How the law applies to the facts’ legal reasoning section, and will include the detail of your successful research strategy in the ‘Research Trail’ section.
• Your conclusion should be complete, such that you neither leave anything unanswered, nor make a point that raises further questions that you do not address (as illustrated by the ‘standard scale’ example at 8.1.7.1 above).
• Your conclusion should progress the matter as far as is appropriate; resist any need to feel obliged always to ‘solve’ the client’s problem for good; you may be at an earlier stage where this is impossible and instead you succeed in your goal of progressing the matter by identifying further information you need first from the client, or a third party. For example, if you have been ask to research whether your client has a remedy, and they have identified facts which you consider constitute a potential breach of contract, then you will need some further information (eg, does the other party agree or dispute the facts, what evidence exists) before you can advise whether the client is likely to succeed with a breach of contract case against the other party.
• Your report must form the basis for advising a client, so it should set out your overall advice here, including any practical advice. This is where you need to evaluate the options (see 9.2.4.1) and provide advice on which might be the most appropriate (see 9.2.4.3).
• The difference between conclusion and advice is explored in section 9.2.4.4; however, to give an example, you might conclude that the client has a legal right to sue, but advise not to sue because, for example, it would be too expensive for your client in terms of cost or time, or they need to preserve a working relationship with the other party. This is another reason why it is so important to avoid the temptation to advise prematurely until you have all of the facts.
• In practice, few initial research reports lead to a straightforward letter advising a client they should proceed directly to court and are likely to win, although you may have had that impression from your undergraduate studies (where typically you are asked to advise fictional characters with a limited backstory, for free, in the context of a short problem question).

RESEARCH TRAIL

Here you should provide enough detail about how you conducted your research and found the relevant law, so that your supervisor or lecturer (i) could easily replicate your research in your absence, and (ii) is reassured that you have followed a sensible research strategy. If your supervisor has given you the sources of law and assured you they are up to date, then you would simply note this (the Figure 8.1 strategy would still be useful here, in helping you decide which source to read first, using the funnel technique). Otherwise, you should be prepared to give a brief description of how to find your sources again quickly. For example, include the search terms you used (if the search produces quick results), the electronic database, or the path or URL that your supervisor can use to browse straight to the relevant material.

However, note that you do not need to detail every step you actually took while conducting your research, providing a blow-by-blow account of ‘what I did yesterday afternoon’. While you may not have taken the most direct route to the answer, you should only detail here the most direct route which you are now aware of, in hindsight. This is not ‘cheating’ or seeking credit for something you did not do, it is simply reflecting the practical reality that whilst you may have taken an indirect route to the answer, the recipient of your report should not have to. The reader should be able to follow this part of your report and directly find the relevant material that you found.

It can be useful to reassure your supervisor by stating that you have checked that secondary sources are consistent with your conclusion, and identify those sources. However, if you started your research by using a very basic source such as a legal dictionary, and this adds nothing now that you have progressed on to more reliable legal sources, then there is no merit in including a reference to this source. In other words, recognise that there may be some sources which helped you make a start, but would not now help your supervisor because they add nothing to your report. This applies equally to internet search engines. You may well have started your research with a Google search, but once this led you into decent secondary and primary sources of law, they are what you should cite, and you should not be mentioning Google anywhere in this report, because your supervisor cannot put it to any use at all in advising a client or making a case in front of a judge.

One of the most important parts of your research trail is where you show you have checked that your research is up to date. You will need to explain how you made sure that you have used sources of law which are current and in force (see 8.1.7). Give the date to which the research is up to date (which may be the date of your report).

As electronic databases are kept up to date by the suppliers and usually updated daily, they tend not to provide the specific date on which they were last updated. If you have used an electronic database, then explain which one you used and the steps you took to make sure that there are no further relevant points of law. Refer to the symbols and text formatting of electronic databases to evidence that you have checked the law is up to date. You should also detail here whether any changes to the law are imminent, if relevant.

If you have used paper resources, then references to the Cumulative Supplement and Noter Up will help you to show that you have ensured paper versions of Halsbury’s (Laws, Statutes or Statutory Instruments) are up to date. You should mention you have checked these even if all they showed was that the law you found had not been amended.

If your research has led you to legislation then you must check that the legislation has come into force and not been repealed, and give the date of commencement (again, see 8.1.7).

TIME TAKEN

In practice this would be required to be recorded to assist time management and be used in calculating the overall cost of the matter for the client (see Chapters 6 and 20). Your supervisor should be encouraging you to state the actual time you took; remember that as a trainee (at, say £75ph) you can spend much longer on this (in this example, over three and a half times longer) than a more senior fee earner with a higher charge-out rate (at, say £275ph), and still deliver more profit.