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Quirk, Patrick --- "Internationalisation of Legal Research: Finding Facts and Finding Law Before the Next Big Crash" [2010] ELECD 427; in Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William (eds), "The Internationalisation of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: The Internationalisation of Law

Editor(s): Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801027

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Internationalisation of Legal Research: Finding Facts and Finding Law Before the Next Big Crash

Author(s): Quirk, Patrick

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

11. Internationalisation of legal
research: finding facts and finding
law before the next big crash
Patrick Quirk*

I believe that the explosive growth of information is transforming the litigation
system, and that the current paradigm is broken.1



INTRODUCTION

Internationalisation is an inexact concept. In some contexts it implies
overcoming regional differences, languages and cultures; it also points
away from all that is local, restricted, or parochial. In traditional legal
terms it raises issues of treaties, jurisdiction, non-obvious means of
enforcement, layers of complexity and sui generis actors.2 It may also
raise a few spectres such as chaotic uncertainty, lack of sovereignty,
habitual and easy disobedience, institutional weakness, and disparate or
unpredictable judicial methods.3
Lawyers operating in such waters have much to gain and lose from
engaging in research, itself an imprecise concept. Those who teach legal
research define it as:

the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support
legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step
of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem
and concludes with the application and communication of the results of the
investigation.4


Legal research thus revolves around finding facts and finding law, not
necessarily in that order and not necessarily in one place or at one time. To
`internationalise' this process of identifying and retrieving these facts and law
is to further complicate an already intricate course of action. In the hope of
making discussion simpler, ...