The Library offers New Zealand lawyers holding a practising certificate with a fast, efficient and thorough research service on any legal subject.

Services available:

• AI citation factchecking
• Document delivery (cases, articles, legal text extracts)
• Legal Research

An urgent turnaround service is also available for the above.

Our experienced legal researchers are based at the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch Libraries. All research is underpinned by the Library's comprehensive collection of New Zealand and overseas legal material.

Please be aware that Research services are a premium service offer and charges apply - you will be issued with an invoice upon completion.

How to request research

Contact your nearest library or use our online research request form

Note: Requests for the urgent research service will depend on staff capacity at the time of receipt.  You will be advised.

Research results

Research results are usually provided in the form of case summaries, selected cases, commentary (extracts from loose leaf titles, texts, articles, Law Commission reports etc). We will also provide a concise summary of resources consulted and what our research has found or not found (if relevant).

NB. We do not provide legal opinions

Once you have reviewed your research results, do not hesitate to contact us to discuss options for further research if this is required.

Provide us with as much information as possible

Cases / articles / extracts / legislation

• Please provide full citations or as many details as possible
• Note if you suspect a case citation has been generated by AI and would like us to authenticate.
• Let us know if you would like the cases copied in a particular way (e.g. for court)

Research

• Give us a brief background to your request to provide us with context
• Clearly define your research request. What are you seeking to find out?
• What type of information do you require?
  e.g. case law and commentary, just case law, words and phrases, recent journal articles, comparison of previous legislation wording etc
• Which jurisdiction/s would you like covered?
  e.g. New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, Singapore
• Which court level are you interested in?
  e.g. Court of Appeal and Supreme Court only, High Court and above, guideline judgments only
• Is there a relevant section of an Act?
• Tell us if you have already undertaken some research on the topic and what was (or wasn't) found
  i.e. Note anything we don't need to cover.
• Do you suspect there will be a lot of information or very little?

Also let us know

• Deadlines - when you need your request delivered by
• Preferred delivery method, if other than email
• How long should we spend – what is your time or money limit?