New eBook Release: Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide (2025 edition)

 

JCU Library staff are pleased to announce that the updated and revised edition of Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide has now been published. This guidebook is designed to support JCU students undertaking legal studies and contribute to the development of legal research skills, especially for first year students. Developed as an introductory text, this eBook covers five main areas of legal research:

• Research skills
• Case law
• Legislation
• Secondary sources
• Legal research and artificial intelligence
  

Updated in 2025 this edition features a new section on legal research using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

This resource was developed by law librarians across all Australian state and territory jurisdictions with an aim to assist students in gaining confidence in their law studies. It is intended as a "jumping off point" for legal research learning and teaching.

Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide is freely available to read and download.

This development of this resource was facilitated by the JCU Open Educational Resources Program

The JCU Open Educational Resources Program is a project in the Education Division, spearheaded by JCU Library. The aim of the project is two-fold: 

• To support lecturers in adopting, adapting and creating Open Educational Resources including textbooks and workbooks in order to better support the learning of our students at JCU.
• To make information about the people and places of the Tropics more widely accessible and understood. More than 40% of the world's population live in the Tropics and 40% of the world's surface is within the Tropics, but the area is often underrepresented in teaching materials. The JCU Open Educational Resources Program aims to provide more access to knowledge and information about this key region.