Brazilian sources for legal information

concepts and resources for legal research

Abstract

The article presents some of the foundations of law, from the prospective of the Brazilian legal system, the civil law. It analyzes the main concepts of law sources, legal information and legal documents, and lists the sources for legal information research. It details primary and secondary sources, as well as their most relevant aspects for the retrieval of legal information from the formal sources of law: legislation, doctrine and case law. Being a descriptive exploratory study, based on empirical experience, bibliographic research and systematic review of the literature, this work listed the main aspects of the Brazilian legal system, identifying legal information resources and the structure of production, distribution and retrieval of information for technical and academic research in law. This article sought to contribute to the field of law librarianship, synthesizing the main subjects needed to assist librarians in understanding the system of production and retrieval of legal information in Brazil.