Canadian Legal Research Manual

Quantitative methods dominate in empirical legal research, but an important segment of the field draws on qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews and observation. In this book both methodologies are explored alongside systematic data analysis.

Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors in law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes students and scholars behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of research methods. These accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. For all of the ambiguities and challenges to the social 'scientific' study of law, the reflections found in this book remind readers that 'good research' displays not an absence of problems, but the care taken in negotiating them.

Empirical Legal Research describes how to investigate the roles of legislation, regulation, legal policies and other legal arrangements at play in society. It is a guide on how to do empirical legal research, covering history, methods, evidence, growth of knowledge and links with normativity. This multidisciplinary approach combines insights and approaches from different social sciences, evaluation studies, Big Data analytics and empirically informed ethics. The authors present an overview of the roots of this blossoming interdisciplinary domain, going back to legal realism, the fields of law, economics and the social sciences, and also to civilology and evaluation studies. The book addresses not only data analysis and statistics, but also how to formulate adequate research problems, to use (and test) different types of theories (explanatory and intervention theories) and to apply new forms of literature research to the field of law such as the systematic, rapid and realist reviews and synthesis studies. The choice and architecture of research designs, the collection of data, including Big Data, and how to analyze and visualize data are also covered. The book discusses the tensions between the normative character of law and legal issues and the descriptive and causal character of empirical legal research, and suggests ways to help handle this seeming disconnect.

Empirical legal research is a growing field of academic expertise, yet lawyers are not always familiar with the possibilities and limitations of the available methods. Empirical Legal Research in Action presents readers with first-hand experiences of empirical research on law and legal issues.The chapters, written by an international cast of scholars, reflect on the methods that they have applied in their own empirical work, spanning a wide breadth of research from psychological experiments in personal injury to field studies in sociology and political science. Empirical Legal Research in Action not only reviews the advantages, limitations and challenges that such methods pose but also considers the value of empirical research to lawyers and the law. Vitally, the contributions offer an academic reflection on methodological challenges, as well as the relevance, of empirical research for lawyers.This insightful book will be useful reading for academic researchers in law and for policymakers seeking to understand the methodological challenges of empirical work in legal research. Social sciences scholars will also find this book of interest to appreciate the multitude of methods in empirical legal research.

Written for those with little or no background in statistics, Statistical Analysis in Criminal Justice and Criminology uses common statistical tools to analyze crime data. It includes both SPSS and Excel criminal justice data sets to complete end-of-chapter exercises and analyses.

Empirical Legal Research describes how to investigate the roles of legislation, regulation, legal policies and other legal arrangements at play in society. It is invaluable as a guide to legal scholars, practitioners and students on how to do empirical legal research, covering history, methods, evidence, growth of knowledge and links with normativity.