Introducing research in law and beyond
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# 3.3 Searching the literature

You will have undertaken legal research and developed your research skills as you prepared for earlier assignments. A literature review builds on this. You may, however, be wondering where to start. One technique is to use an iteration of five stages (see Figure 7) to help you with your early researching.

As shown in Figure 7 the five stages are: planning, searching, gathering, analysing and comparing.

Figure 7 A five stage approach to literature search
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Following these stages will provide you with a systematic approach to gathering and analysing literature in your chosen topic of study; this will ensure that you take a critical approach to the literature.

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