Self Paced Lesson - Tertiary and Secondary Legal Materials - Subject Guide: 1: Types of Legal Materials

This Self-paced Lesson will introduce you to tertiary and secondary legal materials.
Tertiary and secondary materials are the materials that discuss the law and offer pointers to relevant primary legal materials.
Tertiary and secondary legal materials also can offer analysis and critique of the law.
They are a good starting point for legal research as they can provide you with an overview of an area of law and give you direction to further resources and information that can help you with your research topic.

Legislation and cases are the documents which contain the written records of the law.
These are known as 'primary' legal materials.

Extrinsic legal materials are documents defined within a jurisdiction's Interpretation Act which can be used in court to interpret the meaning and intent of legislation.
These usually comprise: 

• an Act’s Second Reading Speech
• Explanatory Memorandum
• relevant reports of Parliamentary Committees
• Law Reform reports
• parliamentary debates (Hansard)

Secondary legal materials are those materials which are ABOUT the law. Secondary materials include:

• Books, journals and commentaries which discuss the law;

Tertiary legal materials, such as encyclopaedias and dictionaries provide an overview and background on a topic.

They compile, list or digest information from other sources.

As such, tertiary materials are not considered acceptable material upon which to base academic legal research.

Generally, students will start research by finding out about the law from tertiary and secondary materials.
These materials will point students to the pertinent primary materials, which also must be used when conducting legal research.

Citation of both secondary and primary materials using the Australian Guide to Legal Citation is covered in the AGLC Referencing Guide.