Online Legal Research

Online legal research

Method skill for any research that touches binding legal authority. The engine's domain is largely East African / Commonwealth (Uganda, Kenya, EAC), but the core methodology is jurisdiction-agnostic and the legal source-books are US-faithful. The skill therefore separates method (universally portable) from examples (often US, retained as illustration only) and supplies an East African overlay for application in the engine's home jurisdictions.

The non-negotiable guardrail

Embed the source-evaluation evidence-discipline clause verbatim in every sub-agent legal-research brief:

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## Use When

- Use when the answer depends on legal authority, jurisdiction, currency, or treatment by a court.

## Do Not Use When

- Do not use for general policy research that does not require legal authority, or present research as legal advice.

## Inputs

| Artefact | Source or provider | Required? | If absent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal question, jurisdiction, material date, and authorised source access | Requester and official legal repositories | required | Return search terms and authority gaps; no legal conclusion |

## Workflow

1. Frame the legal issue, jurisdiction, date, and required authority level.
2. Search primary authority first, then use secondary material only to locate or interpret it.
3. Verify text, currency, treatment, and pinpoint location; stop when controlling authority cannot be confirmed.
4. Analyse authority and facts separately, state counter-authority, and recover with a qualified research note when access is incomplete.

## Capability contract

Default to read-only research. Network access may retrieve public law; filing, contacting parties, or changing legal records is outside scope without explicit authority.


## Online Legal Research Fallback Notes
Without authoritative access or currency checking, provide no definitive legal conclusion; list unverified authorities and checks still required.

## Decision rules

| Choice | Action | Failure avoided |
|---|---|---|
| Binding current primary authority exists | Centre the analysis on it | Secondary source treated as law |
| Authority is persuasive or treatment is unclear | Label status and qualify conclusion | Overstated legal certainty |

## Outputs

| Artefact | Consumer | Observable acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Authority table and legal research memorandum | Researcher or counsel | Each proposition has jurisdiction, status, pinpoint citation, URL, and currency note |


## Online Legal Research Evidence Notes
- Preserve authority copies or locators, search date, treatment checks, quotations, and unresolved gaps.

## Quality Standards

Quote exactly, distinguish holding from commentary, and never invent a statute, case, court, citation, or URL.

## Anti-Patterns

- Relying on a search snippet. Fix: open and verify the authority.
- Citing a case without treatment checking. Fix: verify current status.
- Mixing jurisdictions without labels. Fix: identify binding and persuasive authority.
- Quoting without a pinpoint locator. Fix: cite the paragraph or section.
- Presenting an access gap as no law. Fix: report no source found and the search limits.

## Worked example

For a statutory question, identify the governing jurisdiction and date, retrieve the official text, verify amendments, then connect each conclusion to a section locator.

## References

- [Source hierarchy](references/source-hierarchy-and-authority.md)
- [Online workflow](references/online-research-workflow.md)
- [Citation discipline](references/citation-and-quoting-discipline.md)
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HARD CONSTRAINT — NO HALLUCINATION:
- Do NOT invent statistics, names, organisations, court cases, statutes, or URLs.
- Cite every numeric claim and every direct quote at the point it appears.
- If you cannot find a source for a fact, mark it as a "gap" — do not fabricate filler.
- For any claim you assemble from multiple sources, mark it "(synthesis)".
- For any inference, mark it "(inference)".
- Verbatim quotes must reproduce text exactly as it appeared in the source — no creative editing.

For legal work, the failure mode is severe: a fabricated case name, statute number, or pinpoint citation is malpractice-grade. Every case name and statute citation is verified against an authoritative repository before it ships.

When to invoke this skill

• Question hinges on whether something is lawful, regulated, or actionable
• Output references statutes, regulations, court decisions, gazettes, parliamentary records
• A counterparty (regulator, lawyer, tribunal, court) might rely on the output
• The user asks for a "regulatory landscape", "compliance overview", "case law summary", or similar
• Cross-jurisdictional analysis (e.g., comparing Ugandan and Kenyan data-protection law)

The legal-research workflow

1. Frame the legal question         → references/legal-analysis-irac.md (Issue step)
2. Identify the relevant jurisdiction(s) and forum(s)
                                    → references/source-hierarchy-and-authority.md
3. Locate primary authority         → references/source-hierarchy-and-authority.md
                                      + references/east-african-overlay.md (EA work)
4. Triangulate with secondary       → references/source-hierarchy-and-authority.md
5. Search online with discipline    → references/online-research-workflow.md
6. Validate currency (citator)      → references/online-research-workflow.md
7. Apply IRAC                       → references/legal-analysis-irac.md
8. Cite-check before shipping       → references/citation-and-quoting-discipline.md

Reference router

Core distinctions (load these into working memory)

Primary vs secondary authority. Primary authority is the law itself — constitutions, statutes, regulations, court judgments, treaties. Secondary authority is commentary on the law — textbooks, journal articles, encyclopaedias, restatements. Only primary authority can bind a court. Secondary authority guides interpretation but never controls.

Mandatory vs persuasive authority. Mandatory (binding) authority is primary authority that a court is required to follow — typically because it issued from a higher court in the same jurisdiction, or is a statute of that jurisdiction in force on the relevant date. Persuasive authority is everything else: primary authority from a different jurisdiction, dicta, lower-court decisions in a higher court, all secondary authority. A court may follow persuasive authority but is not bound to.

Stare decisis. The doctrine that requires a court to follow a previous decision of itself or a higher court when current facts and issues are sufficiently similar to the earlier case. Not absolute — exceptions include outdated reasoning, supervening legislation, and demonstrably bad reasoning (per Putman & Albright).

Currency. A statute may have been amended; a case may have been overruled, reversed, or distinguished. Every cited authority must be checked for currency before it ships. That check is the function of a citator (Shepard's, KeyCite, or jurisdiction-equivalent).

Universal output rule for legal claims

Every legal claim ships with:

• Authority cited (case name, statute section, regulation number, treaty article)
• Pinpoint reference (paragraph, section, page — not just the case)
• Source repository link (KenyaLaw, ULII, eCase, court website, gazette PDF) with archive snapshot
• Currency check (verified active / not overruled / not amended on date X)
• Tier assigned via source-evaluation/references/credibility-ladder.md (legal authority is normally tier 1 or 2)
• Date accessed (UTC)

If any of those is missing, the claim does not ship.

Universal anti-patterns in legal research

• Citing a case from a syllabus, headnote, or commentary without reading the judgment
• Treating a foreign-jurisdiction case as binding when it is at most persuasive
• Quoting a statute as enacted when it has since been amended (no currency check)
• Relying on a single secondary source (treatise, blog, AI summary) as if it were primary
• Pinpointing to a "page" in an electronic judgment with no pagination — must use paragraph numbers
• Confusing the holding (binding rule) with dicta (non-binding aside)
• Treating a judgment of a lower court as authoritative for a higher court
• Citing a US case in a Ugandan or Kenyan brief as if it were anything more than persuasive comparative material
• Inventing a case name, docket number, or section number — strike on sight per evidence-discipline

Companion skills

• source-evaluation — universal floor; legal authority still carries tiers and verification
• analytic-tradecraft — when conflicting authorities require an estimative judgment
• academic-writing — when the legal output is academic (essay, journal article)
• business-writing — when the legal output is a memo, advisory, brief
• osint-investigation — when statutes/regulations interact with named entities
• due-diligence — when legal research feeds an entity-level risk picture
• kenya-academic-research, uganda-academic-research — for jurisdiction-specific style and language

Sub-agent briefing template (legal cohort)

When dispatching a legal-research sub-agent, include — verbatim — the evidence-discipline clause above, plus:

JURISDICTION CONSTRAINT:
- Treat [jurisdiction] courts/statutes as the only mandatory authority.
- Other-jurisdiction material is persuasive at most — flag with "(persuasive)".
- Verify every cited case on [KenyaLaw / ULII / EACJ / specified repository] before quoting.
- Verify currency: is the statute amended? is the case overruled, reversed, or distinguished?
- Pinpoint cite to paragraph (judgments) or section (statutes), never a generic page.
- Provide a verifiable URL (with archive snapshot) for every authority.

Degraded Mode

Without authoritative access or currency checks, return a narrow qualified research note and mark each unavailable check not assessed.

Evidence Produced

Reference Index

• East African overlay; IRAC analysis