Sources

Question 1

What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?

Answer 1

Primary sources state the actual law. Secondary sources are someone’s explanation of the law.

Question 2

Are primary and secondary legislation primary or secondary sources?

Answer 2

Primary and secondary legislation are both primary sources.

Question 3

Are statutory instruments primary or secondary legislation?

Answer 3

Statutory instruments are secondary legislation.

Question 4

What are Practice Directions?

Answer 4

A form of guidance produced by the judiciary on issues coming before the courts on a particular topic of piece of legislation.

Question 5

What are the following examples of?

Director’s Disqualification Proceedings
Fixed Costs in the Court of Protection
Pre-action Protocol for Judicial Review Cases.

Answer 5

Practice directions

Question 6

What is a pro and a con for using hard copy sources?

Answer 6

Pro: still around if internet goes down.

Con: could be out of date.

Question 7

What are case reports?

Answer 7

Case reports are reports of decided cases, written by a specialist writers and checked by the judges before their publication.

Question 8

Are case reports primary or secondary sources?

Answer 8

Case reports are primary sources of law.

Question 9

What are the following examples of?

All England Law Reports
Weekly Law Reports
Industrial Cases Reports
Banking Law Reports
Planning Law Reports.

Answer 9

Case reports

Question 10

What is the most common hard copy encyclopaedia?

Answer 10

Halsbury’s Laws of England (Halsbury’s)

Question 11

Is an encyclopaedia a primary or secondary source of law?

Answer 11

Encyclopaedias are secondary sources of law.

Question 12

What are practitioner’s texts?

Answer 12

They are designed to provide expert guidance on procedural issues or to provide specialist coverage of a particular practice area.

Question 13

Are practitioner’s texts primary or secondary sources of law?

Answer 13

Practitioner’s texts are secondary sources of law.

Question 14

What is the White Book?

Answer 14

A guide to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) or The Family Court Practice, containing a number of procedural grounds.

Question 15

What are the following examples of?

The Family Court Practice
Chitty on Contract
Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment
Palmer’s Company Law
Woodfall’s Law of Landlord and Tenant
Thomas on Current Sentencing Practice

Answer 15

Practitioner’s texts

Question 16

Are journals and articles primary or secondary texts?

Answer 16

Secondary texts

Question 17

What are the following examples of?

LexisLibrary
Lawtel
Westlaw
Practical Law

Answer 17

Subscription resources - online

Question 18

What is www.bailii.org used for?

Answer 18

It is a free website which provides access to statutes and statutory instruments as well as access case reports.

Question 19

Which courts provide case reports?

Answer 19

All UK appeal courts, including:

Privy Council
Divisions of High Court
Family Court
County Court.

Court of Justice of the European Union
European Court of Human Rights.

Question 20

Can you use search engines for legal research?

Answer 20

Yes, Google etc can be used to find leads, but often are inefficient trying to get the search results whittled down.

Question 21

Can you use Wikipedia for legal research?

Answer 21

No, not recommended.

Question 22

Which of the following is not a disadvantage of hard copy resources?

a) They may become out of date
b) They have less reliable authors
c) They can take up a large amount of space
d) They are expensive

Answer 22

b) They have less reliable authors. Hard copy resources usually have reliable authors, but they can take up a large amount of space, are expensive and can be out of date.

Question 23

Which type of resource is an explanation of the law and not the law itself?

a) Primary source
b) Secondary source

Answer 23

b) Secondary source

Primary sources state the actual law. Secondary sources are someone’s explanation of the law.

Question 24

True or false. Search engines such as Google or Bing should never be used in legal research.

Answer 24

False. While you have to be careful with search engines, they can be used when doing legal research to find leads that can be checked in more trusted.