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The analysis of law and legal systems over the past decades has been characterized by a steadily growing interest in an external perspective as opposed to the traditional internal perspective of the legal profession. The movement has been set in motion by social scientists and economists who wanted to know more about the ‘law in action’, leaving the ‘law in the books’ to legal scholars.1 A central element of this line of research is empirical work. Empirical legal research can first of all be helpful by simply observing how and how often specific legal rules are actually applied in real-world situations. These observations can also be used to reflect on whether and how law and society are related in a causal way. This can, for instance, entail a fresh and free exploration of the data to develop some hypotheses, a first piece of theory, as to how a legal rule affects the behaviour of the citizens and organizations that are subject to the rule. But once a more or less full-fledged theory is available, observations can also be used for a serious statistical test of the theory’s validity. In the meantime, the interest in empirical legal research has also spread widely among legal scholars.2 But they are generally not very well educated in the dos and don’ts of that line of research. Now, of course, there are many textbooks, both introductory and advanced, on social science research methods, statistics and econometrics.3 The setting of the presentation in these textbooks, the issues that are being addressed and the level of the treatment do not nicely fit in, however, with the needs of the JD student or any other legal academic who is taking the first steps in this unfamiliar field. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the expertise and skills of the legal novice and the more specialized literature on empirical research methods.

A Young Person’s Guide to Empirical Legal Research. With Illustrations from the Field of Medical Malpractice