Jill Cottrell studied law at the London School of Economics and Yale Law School. She has been Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Hong Kong since 1990, and has there been involved in the course on Legal Research and Writing, as well as substantive law courses. Her earlier career involved teaching law at two universities in Nigeria followed by fourteen years at the Law School of the University of Warwick in England.

This book is designed especially for usage in Hong Kong to teach the basic skills of finding legal materials, both printed and computer-based ones. Its objective is to help students explore the range of materials which they will use in the course of their legal education, and thereafter in the practice of law. To illuminate the study of law, research involving non-legal materials is also provided. Law students at university will find this book an indispensable guide to legal research, and so will thousands of Hong Kong residents who study law as part-time courses. Practitioners, especially those in the early stages of their careers, or those unfamiliar with Hong Kong materials because they have come from another jurisdiction, will also find this book useful. Even the established members of the profession who are not too familiar with CD-ROM and On-line databases will also benefit.