ABSTRACT
Empirical legal research is defined here to include the study of law, legal processes and legal phenomena using social research methods, such as interviews, observations or questionnaires. Many students and early career legal academics embarking on empirical research into law come from academic backgrounds where they have had limited exposure to social research methods. They may have completed law degrees where there was some use of empirical legal research in the curriculum.1 However, such exposure will probably be as the reader of the findings of empirical studies and they may not have been encouraged to consider the methodological issues in much depth. Very few will have conducted their own research using methods of quantitative or qualitative data collection and analysis. So how does a law graduate make the transition from doctrinal legal research to carrying out their own empirical legal studies, and what are the benefits of doing so?
