Learning Objective: After completion of this lesson students will a) learn about the definition of research; b) identify the basic characteristics of research

1. INTRODUCTION
TO LEGAL
RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
Preeti Kana Sikder
Assistant Professor
Department of Law & Justice
Jahangirnagar University

2. Course
Objective
The purpose of this course is
to instill the motivation of
researching among the
students. To achieve that aim,
this course explains the basic
needs and understandings of
legal research methodology
with a widened focus on
qualitative legal research.

3. Learning
Outcomes
After completion of this course
students will be able to –
illustrate the importance of legal
research;
Identify and compare the
different streams of legal
research;
Understand the role of research
in the development of law and
legal institutions;
comprehend the importance of
researching as a law student.

4. UNDERSTANDING
RESEARCH
Research is to see what everyone else has seen, and
to think what nobody else has thought.
__ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (scientist from hungary)

5. The Concept of Research
• In its ordinary sense, the term research refers to
a search for knowledge.
• The prefix ‘re’ in the word ‘research’, means
“repeated, frequent or intensive”.
• Research therefore implies a continued
‘frequentative’ ‘intensive’ ‘search’ for truth or an
inquiry for the verification of a fresh theory or
for supplementing a prevailing theory.

6. Understanding
Research
• Careful investigation specifically
through search for new facts in
any branch of knowledge
• Systematised effort to gain new
knowledge
• The manipulation of things,
concepts or symbols for the
purpose of generalizing to
extend, correct or verify
knowledge, whether that
knowledge aids in construction of
theory or in the practice of an art.

7. Characteristic
of Research
• Mere aimless, unrecorded,
unchecked search is not research
which can never lead to valid
conclusions.
• Only systematic intensive
investigation into, or inquiry of fact,
qualifies to get the label of research.
• Such ‘search’ becomes systematic
when a researcher, in his quest for
knowledge attempts to collect the
information in various ways and
exposes data to an intensive scrutiny.
• Research is a continuous process.

8. Definition of Research
• The 1911 Cambridge edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica :
“The act of searching into a matter closely and
carefully, inquiry directed to the discovery of truth
and in particular, the trained scientific
investigation of the principles and facts of any
subject, based on original and first hand study of
authorities or experiment…”

9. Combined
reading of
mentioned
explanations
reveal…
• Research refers to the process and
means to acquire knowledge about
any natural or human
phenomenon.
• It is the process of discovering new
facts aiming to contribute to the
thitherto known information of the
phenomenon.
• Research is the careful, diligent
and exhaustive investigation of a
specific subject matter with a view
to knowing the truth and making
original contribution in the existing
stock of knowledge.