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Legal Reference

411 for Government

6 November 2000. Carroll Publishing Company, publisher of several government directories, offers this database of federal, state, county, and municipal telephone numbers for free. If you know the name of a government official, enter it to find his/her telephone number. Other search features include:

1) Frequently Requested Numbers: Find public airports, libraries, hospitals, museums, courts, and more by city and state.

2) Federal: Find the names and telephone numbers of those who head the federal government's agencies. The listing also includes names and telephone numbers of those who head divisions within the department as well as related Web sites. When I accessed the database, the later feature occasionally did not work.

3) State: Find the names, telephone and fax numbers, and Web sites of governors and federal congressional representatives by state.

4) County and municipal: Find the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of of county and municipal representatives as well as the county's population and Web site and the municipality's county seat and Web site.

Almanac of American Politics

24 May 2000. National Journal Inc. offers the 2000 edition of The Almanac of American Politics. It offers extensive commentary on the current political climate, biographies of presidential candidates including statements on select issues (statements available in text, audio, or video) and biographies of congressmen including videos of their campaign ads (senators only) and information about their voting records.

Basic Legal Citation

15 June 1999. Revised 16 July 2007. Cornell Legal Information Institute offers this Web site on legal citation by Peter Martin. It provides rules, commentary and examples based on the Harvard Bluebook as well as the ALWD (Association of Legal Writing Directors) Citation Manual.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Revised 7 April 2006. The directory provides biographies of Presidents, Congressmen and other government officials, who have served since 1774. Biographies typically include years of service, party affiliation, personal data, education and occupation(s). Several also contain a bibliography. The site does not appear to enable searching. You may browse biographies alphabetically by last name. The directory is available in PDF only.

Bluebook, The

21 February 2008. A joint project of The Harvard Law Review Association, the Columbia Law Review Association, The Yale Law Journal Company, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, The Bluebook provides search and browse access to legal profession's method of legal citation. While you may browse the index, table of contents, and even the Bluebook tips, for free, full access requires a subscription key, which you may obtain through the purchase link or through buying the book in a bookstore.

According to the site documentation, this online edition is provides the same content "as the printed Eighteenth Edition."

Technical note: Use of the site requires javascript.

Chicago Manual of Style, The

26 September 2005. The University of Chicago offers this site, which provides information about this legal style manual. You may purchase the manual, read excerpts and obtain answers to common questions. Registered (free) members may also query the current edition to find where the keywords appear in the text. In other words, the search results provide the section title and number of the manual, and not the full-text.

Code of Conduct for United States Judges

17 January 2000. Cornell offers this Code as a folio infobase. It reproduces the 1995-96 edition of the canons with commentary.

Code of Federal Regulations - Cornell

Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) provides an interface to the CFR offered by the Government Printing Office. Find relevant sections by citation, by searching individual titles, or by querying the index of subject headings created by LII.

Retrieve sections in HTML or PDF formats.

This is a user-friendly speedy interface to data available at GPO Access.

Congressional Record

The Congressional Record records debate on the floor of Congress. Many times, Congressmen read a company's written remarks into the record. Find debate, select committee reports and bills, and commentary. GPO Access offers this information from 1994.

Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, The

13 September 2002. Prepared by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, this publication offers the text of the Constitution, amendments, proposed amendments not ratified by the States, and case annotations. Researchers may perform keyword searches or download relevant portions of the text. Downloading in portable document format (.pdf) is also available.

Constitutions, Statutes, and Codes

Revised 13 September 2002. Cornell Legal Information Institute offers this gateway to federal and state constitutions, laws, and regulations. Several of these materials are available via Cornell LII servers. While the site typically improves on the use of the materials by adding search and browsing features, researchers should take care to verify and update information they find. More current sources of the United States Code (USC) and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) exist.

Consumer Price Indexes

The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers Consumer Price Indexes, news releases, reports and fact sheets.

Contact the Federal Judiciary

12 May 2006. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts offers this search tool for finding federal court contact information. Search by type of court and location to find the full street address, a map, phone number, Web site address and URL for submitting electronic filings.

Court Rules, Forms and Dockets

28 September 2000. LLRX.com offers search access to source information for federal and state court rules, forms and dockets. The database includes links to over 700 sources. Search by keyword (e.g., pennsylvania forms to find links to federal and state court forms), or browse by one or more of the following criteria: jurisdiction, document type, or state. The database returns links to credible sources that match your query.

A tremendous improvement over the former court rules guide, this resource is easy to use, uncluttered, and fast.

Docstoc

15 November 2007. Revised 19 November 2007. Docstoc combines file sharing and social networking. Members upload documents they agree to share. Documents are categorized broadly as legal, business, financial, technology, educational or creative. Other members also may tag or comment on the documents.

You may browse, display and e-mail documents without becoming a member. However, to upload and share, tag, comment on, or download documents, you must register with the site.

All documents, regardless of their original format, display in MacroMedia FlashPaper. Therefore, you must allow javascript to run at this site.

Drafts of Uniform and Model Acts

Revised 16 May 2003. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Law School library, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws offers drafts and final versions of Uniform and Model Acts. The documents are available in Word, Word Perfect, ascii text, and PDF formats. When relevant, the site also provides meeting agendas, statements, and commentary.

eBook Locator

28 August 2002. Search a database of electronic books available in a variety of formats. Search by ebook format, title, author, subject, keyword, publisher, or identifier (including digital object identifier) to find bibliographic information, as well as pricing, retailers, and occasional excerpts.

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR)

3 March 2004. Presently in beta, the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) offers researchers a timely source for finding federal regulations currently in effect. The Office of the Federal Register and the Government Printing Office maintain the database, which integrates rule amendments and additions with the current CFR title. Note that this beta version is not an official legal edition of the CFR.

You can browse the site by CFR title and section, or search it. Search features include several proximity connectors. Searching is more precise when limited to a specific CFR title. Search results are displayed like a table of contents. Each page of text reflects the current database revision date as well as the source of the regulation.

Everybody's Legal Dictionary

Revised 17 October 2003. Self-help legal publisher Nolo Press makes available this free legal dictionary. Browse or search a lexicon of legal terms and phrases commonly used in the practice of law. Each term features a definition with links to other defined terms.

Federal Court Locator

6 October 1999. Revised 25 February 2005. Villanova University School of Law maintains this research guide for finding federal court Web sites and court opinions. It notes whether the Web site is the official source of the information or an alternative source.

Federal Register

Follow this link to find the government's official site for federal regulations. Coverage includes 1994 to present.

Federal Web Locator

6 October 1999. Revised 27 February 2004. The Center for Information Law and Policy at the Chicago-Kent College of Law maintains this finding tool. Use it to find the Web sites of federal offices in all branches of government. In addition to legislative, judicial and executive Web sites, the index covers federal independent establishments and government corporations, federal government consortium and quasi-official agencies, federal boards, commissions and committees and non-government related sites.

FedForms

26 March 2001. Find a database of information about federal forms including where you can find them on the Web. Search by keyword or by agency.

Find a Lawyer

18 October 2000. FindLaw offers this database containing over 500,000 lawyer and law firm listings. Search by lawyer or firm name, or location, to find a list of law firms or lawyers in certain practices, or specific law firms or lawyers. Most of the listings I reviewed offered attorney name, firm name, address, phone, and broad practice areas. I found no information about education or experience.

FindForms.com

4 October 2000. The folks from LawGuru.com offer this database of legal forms. You will find a few forms for free, but the majority are available for purchase. They cover a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, wills, divorce, power of attorney, pre-marital, employment, and incorporation. The fee-based forms have been customized for use in various states.

Full-text State Statutes and Legislation on the Internet

30 August 2002. Revised 3 February 2006. A long-time, consistently up-to-date favorite amongst legal researchers is this guide to sources providing full-text state laws and legislation. It covers statutes, constitutions, session laws, legislation and administrative regulations. Since the guide includes some non-authoritative sources, legal professionals should verify information with another source.

International Law Dictionary & Directory

Washington State University professor, Ray August, offers this resource containing international legal terms, descriptions of international organizations, and links to official country pages.

Internet Legal Resources for Legal Professionals

16 May 2008. Coordinated Legal Technologies offers several useful link collections. Federal Resources provides links to select primary federal materials with a focus on what would be of interest to California lawyers. Reference Tools provides several link collections, including links, or link collections, to public record sources, company and people resources, general reference materials and news sources.

Please note: Some collections are more up-to-date than others. For instance, as of this writing, the collection of business entity databases (available via Reference Tools) was updated very recently.

Judicial Salary Resource Center

20 July 2007. Revised 24 July 2007. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), publisher of the annual Survey of Judicial Salaries, makes available this Web site, which provides the latest data. You may rank judicial positions by the most current salary data available (but results appear in alphabetical order). You may search salary data by state or region and judicial position as well as the latest reporting period. The easiest way to display the most current data for an individual state is to use the "US Map Interface" feature. The site also provides brief information about how states set judicial salaries.

We encountered one technical issue with the site. When conducting a search, if the query yields no matches, the searcher sees a blank Web page with no explanatory text. Similarly, if you fail to select a required field (e.g., latest reporting period), you receive an ASP scripting error.

Jury Duty in Federal Courts

12 May 2006. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts provides an introduction to jury service. It cover trial juries (aka petit juries) and grand juries as well as the qualifications required to serve as a federal juror.

Law About

Cornell Legal Information Institute offers brief summaries of law on various topics. The summaries typically include links to primary materials as well as references to authoritative print sources.

law.com

Revised 25 May 2000. Whether lawyer, student, or consumer, researchers will find useful commentary and recommended resources here. Parts of the site require a subscription. LawNewsNetwork.com and law.com, both run by America Lawyer Media, merged during April 2000. Halfway down the page on the left-hand menu, find The Real Life Dictionary of the Law by Gerald and Kathleen Hill. The resource includes more terms than other Web-based legal dictionaries and offers a feature for searching definitions.

LawGuru.com

21 February 2003. Another mega site, LawGuru.com offers legal news (from various sources via RSS news feed), the former House of Representatives Internet Law Library, a directory of legal information sites, various chat rooms for discussion of legal issues, an attorney-locator service, and more. Some notable features include legal forms (incurs a charge) and FAQs, which compose numerous legal questions and answers (free).

Legal-Forms-Kit.com

27 March 2001. While predominantly a commercial site selling legal forms, researchers will find some useful free information for initiating legal research. The "legal research" link provides brief "how to" tips for conducting legal research. It focuses on finding statutes and U.S. Supreme Court cases. The site also offers several legal forms free of charge. Note that you may have to modify them for your jurisdiction.

List of CFR Sections Affected

18 September 2002. GPO Access provides online access to this reference publication. It also explains how to use the document to update information found in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Visitors may search or browse the publication back to 1997.

Martindale.com

6 January 2000. Revised 4 December 2007. LexisNexis offers a number of legal or law-related sources via this site. Find a lawyer by personal or firm name, location or practice area. Search for articles on law-related topics by keyword. Find experts by keyword or category, legal organizations or events, descriptions of key LexisNexis online resources, such as the Law Digest, and more.

Recent enhancements to the site include a side-by-side comparison feature for reviewing lawyer and law firm listings and client reviews (published with the permission of the reviewed firm).

Registration is required to access and use this site. Some services are fee-based.

Martindale-Hubbell Lawyers.com

28 August 2002. Query Martindale-Hubbell's database of lawyers, which contains lawyer profiles for attorneys from countries worldwide. Also find information, for use by individuals or businesses, on a variety of legal topics, legal tips, questions & answers, and more.

Model Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and Guidelines for Enforcement

Connect here to review the code of ethics for paralegals.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct (ABA, 1999 edition)

Cornell Legal Information Institute offers this folio infobase containing the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The resource includes rule comments, history, correlation tables and state narratives.

Nolo's Legal Encyclopedia

Written for consumers, legal researchers may also find this site useful. Many essays offer links to additional web resources.

online! a reference guide to using internet sources

18 October 1999. Bedford/St. Martin's, a college publishers specializing in the humanities, recently made the chapters of this 1998 book dealing with citing Internet sources available. Citation styles covered include MLA (Modern Language Association of America; used primarily by writers of literature and the humanities), APA (American Psychological Association), the Chicago Manual of Style and CBE (Council of Biology Editors).

While no official guidance exists for citing legal documents, this resource provides helpful suggestions for those who can't wait for the next edition of the Blue Book to deal with this issue.

Securities Lawyer's Deskbook, The

Created and maintained by The Center for Corporate Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law, the Deskbook offers the text of major securities laws and regulations.

Standard Industrial Classification Manual

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) offers this search interface to the 1987 edition of the SIC Manual.

State Court Locator

6 October 1999. Formerly a service of The Center for Information Law and Policy, this tool assists researchers looking for the opinions of the various state courts. Villanova now maintains this resource.

State Web Locator

6 October 1999. Formerly a joint Villanova/Chicago-Kent effort, this resource now resides at Chicago-Kent. Please note the new Web address.

Use the State Web Locator to find Web sites for state agencies. Many of these will link to official state legislative pages.

Statistical Abstracts of the United States

Tables from 1995 to the current edition are available in portable document format (PDF). The site also offers USA Statistics in Brief, a supplement to Statistical Abstract.

Supreme Court Nominations

5 December 2005. The Library of Congress has compiled this guide to resources on the people nominated for Supreme Court justice. You will find Senate floor debates, votes, hearing transcripts and Senate statements about select nominations. The guide also provides a bibliography of print and electronic materials about the individuals as well as a list of links to other Web-based resources.

The Bluebook - Archived Copies

19 March 2008. Linked from this introductory page at The Bluebook Web site are all previous editions of the official Uniform System of Citation (The Bluebook) from the first edition (1926) to, and including, the 15th (1991). You may display or download each edition in PDF.

TRAC Reports on People and Staffing

3 October 2002. TRAC Reports, a data research and distribution service associated with Syracuse University, provides information about the caseload and court activity of federal district court judges who served between 1986 and 2001. Find answers to questions like "What were the average sentences imposed by Judge X for various categories of offenses?" Learn how the numbers compare to sentences imposed for similar offenses by other judges in the same district or by judges nationwide.

The site offers similar reports on federal staffing. In development are sections covering federal prosecutors and federal administrators.

U.S. Attorneys' Manual

Find the Department of Justice's U.S. Attorneys' Manual compressed by chapter for quick downloading. The files exist in WordPerfect 5.1 format.

U.S. Constitution

18 September 2002. FindLaw reprints, and modifies the formatting of, the Library of Congress publication, The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. FindLaw's version incorporates the 1996 and 1998 supplements into the text of the 1992 document. (NOTE: It does not incorporate the recent 2000 supplement.) It also creates hyperlinks for internal reference and browsing.

SEE ALSO: The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, Library of Congress, 1992 with 1996, 1998, and 2000 supplements.

U.S. Government Manual

GPO Access offers the U.S. Government Manual from 1995 forward. Researchers may search it here.

U.S. Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manuals and Amendments

The U.S. Sentencing Commission offers Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manuals and amendments from 1994.

United States Code (Cornell)

Revised 22 October 2004. Cornell's Legal Information Institute provides a search interface to the official U.S. Code available at the House of Representatives. Locate relevant Code sections by citation, single title search, or by searching the entire Code.

Nice features include internal hyperlinks to referenced sections of the Code, historical notes with links to public laws when available, references to relevant sections of the CFR, and an update feature. Each section also reflects the date of the most recent version (as available at the House of Representatives).

United States Statutes at Large

The Library of Congress introduces digital images of early Statutes at Large volumes. Statutes at Large represents the official publication of the laws and resolutions of the United States Congress. It contains all private and public laws in chronological order. Prior to 1948, it also published all treaties and international agreements approved by the Senate.

The site promises to add volumes in the future.

West Legal Directory

West Group offers a directory of more than 1 million lawyers, law firms, corporate counsel and government lawyers.

Wex

5 December 2005. Cornell Legal Information Institute has developed a Wiki for legal definitions and encyclopedia entries. Unlike Wikipedia, Wex authors have to qualify before they may contribute. Some of the content comes from LII's "Law About" site.

   
 

5-star rating in The Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web

Copyright: 1996 - 2008 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP all rights reserved. Select graphics copyrighted by Jupiterimages Corporation.

Disclaimer: The materials in The Virtual Chase® are informational and provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

 

   

Created: 15 June 1999
Revised:
16 May 2008
URL:
http://www.virtualchase.com/topics/legalref.shtml

Suggestions: Genie Tyburski, tvceditor [at] virtualchase [dot] com