21 October 2002. The Inner Temple Library offers a collection of resource annotations for Web-based legal sources covering the United Kingdom and several other countries. The subject arrangement is simple and easy to use. The site also offers a search feature powered by Google. Revised 10 September 2004. Find a directory of legal resources arranged by jurisdiction and topic. Some areas of the site provide a search interface to select external sources. Unfortunately, the directory has not been kept up to date. Many of the links are broken and some of the search interfaces neglect to include current sources. For example, the federal search section does not include legislation from the current Congress, regulations from the current Federal Register, or current U.S. Supreme Court opinions. 16 December 2004. Adapted from The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web by Robert J. Ambrogi, this Web site provides annotated resources from the first edition of this book. It covers search engines and meta search tools, government Web sites, people finders, legal directories and legal search engines and reference sources. 14 September 2005. BookRags describes itself as "one of the premier online sites for classical study guides, book notes, eBooks, and essays." Covering topics in English, History, Math and Science, BookRags provides study guides, essays, literature summaries, biographies, electronic copies of classical texts, and more. You may search or browse its extensive collection of study materials. 21 February 2003. This mega site organizes legal information Web sites by topic, jurisdiction (including international law) and "extras", which includes resources like legal directories, CLE programs, discussion lists, and more. Information about how to use the site is provided, as well as suggestions for successful searching. Visitors may recommend resources for inclusion via an online form. 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. Revised 10 September 2004. One of the oldest legal information resources on the Web, Cornell LII offers an abundance of information for lawyers, students and legal researchers. Find a legal encyclopedia (Law About) that provides an overview of covered topics and includes linked references to relevant federal statutes, regulations and constitutional provisions. The site also enables searching and displaying many primary legal documents, including the United States Code (U.S.C.), Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.), the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.), the U.S. Constitution and more. It offers a collection of U.S. Supreme Court opinions, which covers May 1990 to present as well as select historical decisions. It also maintains two massive collections--one on legal ethics and the other on social security. About.com, formerly The Mining Company, creators of some of the best research guides on the Web, offers this current legal news resource by Paul S. Reed. This guide spotlights legal industry news events and offers annotated links to numerous sites offer legal commentary on a variety of topics. 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. This site offers an excellent starting point for finding Internet resources on particular legal topics. 30 January 2002. FindLaw's latest creation serves as a good starting point for industry-related and business law research. The site comprises four major sections -- Industry Centers, News, Research Tools, and Law Firm Center. Industry Centers leads to news, commentary, laws, contracts, and other resources pertaining to specific industries or areas of business law. Areas of law covered include antitrust, intellectual property, international, labor, litigation, mergers & acquisitions, securities, tax, and white collar crime.
Take time to browse your topic of interest. While the search engine performed well for the test queries I ran, the site contains a lot of useful information you don't want to miss. Peruse the Food & Beverages industry page, for example, to find several employment-related contracts for Coca-Cola. The same page also lists Westlaw databases likely to provide relevant information for this industry.
Research Tools brings together information appearing elsewhere at FindLaw. For the most part, these represent resources useful to legal professionals. The guide, however, is not infallible. A Pennsylvania law page links to several sources with questionable authority. Moreover, all the automated queries for finding federal legislation proposed by Representatives and Senators from Pennsylvania, yield hits from the 106th Congress -- not the current Congress. 6 September 2002. Revised 25 February 2005. Search the U.S. Constitution, United States Code (USC), Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or the Federal Register. Also find databases containing opinions from the Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court (1893-present). While some features at FindLaw improve the use of these resources over their availability elsewhere on the Web, researchers should take care to verify and update information they find. Other more current sources for the U.S. Constitution, USC, and CFR exist. You can also use this site to find other sources of federal and state case law and statutes. 29 September 2000. Designed to assist consumers in finding Web-based government information, FirstGov.gov offers a topical index and search engine as well as the ability to browse by branch of government. It further provides finding aids as well as specific resources for state and local information. Most, but not all, links lead to government Web sites. FirstGov.gov does not annotate, or offer any additional information about, sources included in the index. 24 October 2002. Revised 28 June 2007. This easy-to-use tool provides access to federal, state and local government information. To begin, click on the applicable state on the map. Or select "federal government" or "federal courts" from the right-hand or page-bottom menu. State listings offer links mostly (but not exclusively) to official government Web sites. You will find constitutions, legislative, judicial and executive branch resources, and an assortment of additional legal research tools. 7 November 2000. America Online shows FirstGov.gov how to index government information on the Web. Government Guide is a consumer-oriented index to government services. Want to know how to obtain a replacement social security card? How to apply for social security benefits? How to shop safely online? How to select the right life insurance policy? You'll find answers to these questions and more easily by using this guide. Hieros Gamos claims to offer research guides for more than 200 subjects. I found some of the subject headings misleading; for example, the link for Worker's Compensation leads to a broader guide on employment law. Still, it's a useful starting point for those seeking a comprehensive listing of resources on particular subjects. 17 September 2002. Cornell Law Library offers this database of new law-related Web resources. Librarians evaluate each resource and provide annotations.
Search the database for resources covering your topic.
Cornell Law Library spotlights approximately four legal resources per week. Receive notification by email or search the InSITE database.
12 September 2001. Bloomsburg University offers this searchable catalog of bibliographic references and links to quality reference resources in many topics. Browse the catalog by Library of Congress classification or search it using BROAD keywords (e.g., legal, law). This site provides a great way to launch your research with sources hand-selected by librarians. This resource annotates and links to legal information sites. Access resources by legal subject. The site also provides a legal forms archive. 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. 25 February 2000. Revised 5 May 2008. Formerly titled Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) by the UK Resource Discovery Network, the site offers a database of information about high quality Web-based resources pertaining to the social sciences. Browse the catalog by subject or query it by keyword or other criteria (see the advanced search feature). Entries include site titles, links, URLs, brief descriptions, keywords, and more. This resources consistently adds several new resources daily.
15 October 2001. This site complements the book, The Invisible Web, by Chris Sherman and Gary Price. Find a directory of over 1,000 databases covering a variety of topics including public records, legal and criminal information, searching for people, and more. Each entry includes a description of the resource, a specific and home page URL, and if available, related resources. 27 February 2008. Founded by a lawyer, JD Supra "promotes the free exchange of information to benefit the legal community, legal consumers, the media and the general public." Legal professionals may register with the site to post court filings and other legal documents or articles. Once you post at least one document, you may also create a free profile. Others may search the documents and profiles for free. Documents are available for downloading in Word or PDF.
You may search documents by keyword, and then limit the retrieval by court, type of filing or subject matter.
Technical note: You must activate javascript to search this site. Free registration is required to display documents in full. 7 March 2003. Revised 8 October 2004. Subtitled a legal directory, the site categorizes links to useful legal and factual Web-based resources. It covers a wide array of topics, including banking and finance, criminal law, ethics, intellectual property, real estate, tax law, and others. You will also find several articles written by the site's owner, Peggie Brown. 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. Revised 30 September 2005. An excellent starting point for legal research, this guide categorizes and annotates useful Web-based resources in law and government. It offers a database of abstracted legal articles, an attorney directory and a free search service (under separate domain) for finding expert witnesses, investigators, process servers, court reporters, ADRs (alternative dispute resolution), practice consultants and notaries. 13 January 2004. The University of Akron, School of Law Library offers this searchable directory of legal research guides. Browse the directory by legal topic or search it using a variety of criteria. Entries include information about the research guide as well as a link to it. If you register (not necessary to browse or search the directory), you can save your search. 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.
13 April 2007. This legal information search engine queries content available in the Law.com network of Web sites as well as content from select legal information Web sites. Query by simple keyword only - no Boolean (AND, OR, NOT), no command qualifiers or other advanced search features. You may limit results by choosing from options that appear in the left-hand menu once the results display. These include information types (articles, news) and sources. 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). 13 January 2004. This free version of SurfWax LawKT provides directory and search access to law firm publications on numerous topics. Select a topic from the index or enter keywords in the search box at the top of the page. The engine returns links to articles written by lawyers. Terms entered in the search box may generate different results than selecting the same terms from the index.
If you select an index topic, the search results provide a link (at the top), which lets you run the query against a news article database. Doing so yields articles from news sources around the world. The briefly annotated entries helpfully include the location of the source. If instead you option to run a search using your own keywords, you can experience some of the features of the Surfwax search engine. These include keyword-in-context (KWIC) summaries of matching items. Click the magnifying glass icon next to the matching title to see the KWIC summary.
9 August 2001. Revised 30 September 2005. Designed primarily for those who seek Minnesota or Wisconsin legal information, LawMoose, by Pritchard Law Webs, serves as a portal to state, local and federal law. Find statutes, legislation, court opinions, legal research primers, attorney disciplinary records and more. The public portal is free. Paying subscribers receive access to the Enhanced Edition of LawMoose, which is designed specifically for Minnesota lawyers. 19 March 2003. Find a lawyer directory as well as a guide to basic legal information on variety of topics. To use the guide, you must first select a state and county. While irrelevant for some questions, doing so generates state statutory citations when applicable. For example, after selecting Pennsylvania/Philadelphia, and following the path: FAMILY LAW -- CHILD CUSTODY, I retrieved a statutory citation to Pennsylvania child custody law as well as commentary about the law. Intended for consumers, the site may also offer useful information for legal professionals. 16 December 2004. Miller/Davis Company, provider of Minnesota legal and business forms, manages this state law portal. Select a state to find summaries of specific areas of law, answers (written by lawyers) to legal questions, a legal directory, links to free legal resources (including some unofficial sources) and more. This is a particularly good starting point for consumers. Lawyers will probably find the summaries and answers to legal questions too general, but it's a good place to find free legal resources in all states. 19 June 2000. Tarlton Law Library offers an easy-to-use interface to information of potential interest to legal researchers. Find federal law, Texas law, the law of other states (interfaces with FindLaw), foreign and international law, law by subject, law organizations, and reference materials. 10 March 2003. Formed to facilitate the distribution of scholarly information, the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) provides access to the Social Science Research Network's database of article abstracts. Search the database, or browse a list of legal sources covered, which also provides access to the table of contents for current issues. Look for the download document button, which appears at the end of an abstract, to find a link to the full-text of the published paper. LSN is part of the Social Science Research Network. 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. 20 November 2002. This portal covers legal and medical sources of information. Arranged by legal or medical topic, entries include brief descriptions as well as the name of the resource and a link to it. A search feature assists those looking to combine topics (e.g., health law). Note that while the site claims to have some quality controls in place, it does allow owners to bid on keywords. 9 July 2001. This site, authored by attorneys, offers commentary and services primarily for consumers. Find answers to common legal questions like how to find a lawyer or what happens if someone dies without a will. Or, review checklists intended to help you avoid legal problems. The site also offers several legal forms (primarily for use in New York) and summaries of court decisions pertaining to various legal topics (banking, divorce, elder law, estate planning, health care, landlord/tenant, personal injury, tax and more). Unfortunately, these brief commentaries do not always include sufficient information for tracking down the case. 18 December 2001. This mega legal site, designed by author Adam J. Piacente and published by Montag Multimedia Publishing Company, offers an extensive directory of federal and state legal and government sites. After selecting a "collection" from the home page, navigate the site using the left-hand pull-down menu. If you see a "load index" link, click it and then scroll to the bottom of the screen to find the resources. While navigation is somewhat cumbersome, the site provides a useful collection of links. 22 March 2007. Lexbe, a Web-based case analysis and document management system, sponsors this free collection of articles for litigators. In accordance with the site's terms of use, to be included, "[a]rticles must have been presented as part of a legal continuing legal presentation (CLE), in a bar journal, or be of similar quality, be of current interest to litigators and related legal professionals, and published in the last two years." You may search for articles by keyword or browse them by topic. Queries yield the title of the article, a description and a link to the original article, whether at Litilaw, a law firm Web site, or other Web-based location. As the collection grows, legal professionals should find it increasingly valuable. 18 June 2007. Revised 19 June 2007. LOUIS, which stands for Library Of Unified Information Sources, is a new search engine for finding documents generated by the federal government. Currently, you may query the full-text of 7 categories of documents simultaneously - congressional reports, the Congressional Record, congressional hearings, the Federal Register, presidential documents, GAO Reports, and bills and resolutions. LOUIS updates its database daily from the Government Printing Office (GPO). Date covered is not specified at the site, but it appears to be from 2001 to present. 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. MegaLaw.com offers a number of useful research features. Find current news headlines with links to the stories, clean search interfaces to valuable Web-based legal information, and more. 6 August 2007. The legislative research librarians of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) make available this index to 50-state compilations covering various issues that concern state legislators and legislative staff. Topics include banking, criminal justice, education, health, immigration, and more. The compilations typically cover several years of legislative activity. 9 January 2003. Philadelphia-based Jenkins Law Library and American Lawyer Media join to provide this fee-based site covering Pennsylvania case law, legal news, verdicts and settlements, court rules, trial listings, and lawsuits filed. The Cases section includes federal, state, and select local court decisions as well as the Digests of Recent Opinions from Pennsylvania Law Weekly (1994 to present) and the unreported opinions of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Local court coverage includes decisions from District & County Reports, 3rd & 4th Series, as well as from various county reporters. News provides access to The Legal Intelligencer (1995 forward) and Pennsylvania Law Weekly (1994 forward). Court Rules covers state court rules and the local rules of various county courts. Trial Listings provides full-text coverage from The Legal Intelligencer for the current three months. Suits Filed lets you browse or search new lawsuits from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. It also provides archival coverage of lawsuits filed in Bucks and Montgomery counties. Verdicts and settlements contains verdicts, awards and settlements reported in Pennsylvania Law Weekly from late 1993 to the present.
Site features include Boolean (AND, OR, NOT) and phrase searching as well as word truncation, but not the use of proximity connectors (NEAR, WITHIN, SAME SENTENCE, etc). Legal professionals may like the ability to download PDF copies of slip opinions. 14 February 2008. Revised 18 March 2008. Owned and powered by Fastcase, The Public Library of Law (PLoL) makes available all cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate cases from 1950 forward, appellate cases from all 50 states back to 1997, the U.S. Code, select statutes or codes from all 50 states, as well as select state regulations, court rules and constitutions. While the case law appears to come directly from Fastcase, other legal documents originate from external sources, such as the House of Representatives (U.S. Code), state legislatures and other trustworthy legal sources. PLoL simply offers an alternate search interface.
Searching here is more advanced than what you would find at a public Web search engine. For instance, the database supports the within (W/n) proximity connector. It also supports Boolean, exact phrase searching and wildcard (*) searching (right-hand truncation only).
Technical notes: You must activate javascript to use this Web site. You must register to display the full text of case law. 18 July 2007. Revised 18 July 2007. Developed by journalists affiliated with NewAssignment.Net, including New York University journalism professor, Jay Rosen, this Wiki proposes to create a resource for understanding popular federal legislation. There isn't much content here to date. Currently, the Wiki offers plain-English analysis and the text of legislation for the following: the Patent Reform Act of 2007, several Internet-related bills, including the SAFE Act of 2007, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, the FAIR USE Act of 2007 and two video game bills - the Truth in Video Game Rating Act and the Video Game Decency Act of 2007.
This is a worthy endeavor to make legal information something the general public can understand. However, I caution researchers to verify the information before relying on it. There is no way to determine the author/s of the individual analyses or his/her credentials. Moreover, as is usually the case with Wiki technology, the text may be edited by any registered user. 10 December 2003. Part of the U.K. Resource Discovery Network, this law portal provides access to primary and secondary sources of law worldwide. Search the portal by keyword or browse it by jurisdiction or legal topic. Entries include the resource title and description, as well as other helpful information like the language of the site. 11 December 2000. Commissioned by the U.K. Office of the e-Envoy for the Cabinet Office, this portal site strives to facilitate access to government information and services in the United Kingdom. Currently, it offers three major paths to information: a keyword search (called "Quick Find"), directories of links (called "Life Episodes"), and a browsing area for discovering information relating to the democratic process and public services (called "CitizenSpace").
Like its counterpart in the U.S. -- FirstGov, UK Online is not particularly easy to use. How should citizens go about finding information about their right to privacy, for example? CitizenSpace (my first guess) offers three categories of information -- finding elected representatives, voting and elections, and complaints about public services. No go.
Life Episodes, which purports to offer "directories of links," provides only four such collections. They deal with traveling, having a baby, crime, and moving. "Quick Find" is the only remaining option. Fortunately, a search for "privacy" without quotations retrieves a couple of links to informative documents. But they're white papers -- not something the average citizen wants to read.
Finding information about your right to privacy involves this process: Enter Quick Find. Locate the button at the bottom of the page labeled "Legal Overviews." Click it to find a page of broad categories. Follow the "sale of goods" link. Note that you have come to another Web site (ukstate.com).
The ukstate.com article pertains to "sale of goods." In the search box, type "privacy." Go to the bottom of the search results page to find a link to an article entitled "What are my rights to privacy?"
Gee, I hope you weren't in a hurry.
10 September 2002. This commercial site offers databases of state and federal case law.
An alternative to traditional online legal research systems, VersusLaw provides access to federal and state case law, as well as, federal statutes and regulations, legal news, and forms. Online documentation indicates tribal and foreign court availability, but does not specify which courts.
LLRX features three articles by reviewer T.R. Halvorson, which cover this service. See Survey of Online Legal Information Alternatives for Small Law Firms and Public Law Libraries, Preview of VersusLaw’s USConline, CFRonline, and CFRupdate!, and VersusLaw's V.: A View through the Southern California Online Users Group Rating Scale Lenses.
Created and maintained by Washburn University School of Law Library, the resource indexes virtually every legal information site. Look for your topic in the opening page's index. 1 October 2002. Maintained by the University of Queensland and other groups, this site serves as a gateway to Australian legal information. Browse or search its topical collections to find related legal documents and information. Each resource description includes a link to the full bibliographic record, provided by an Australian library, as well as a link to the full-text document. Indiana University School of Law offers annotated listings in more than a dozen broad legal topics. It also provides annotations for law school, law firm, government, law journal, organization, and publisher Web sites. 12 April 2001. This Web site purports to "answer every question" pertaining to a legal problem or issue. While the founding board consists of legal professionals, I found no information about who actually answers the questions. Moreover, sample answers do not always provide the name of the author. Therefore, I caution researchers to ask for source information and verify any information provided.
The site offers numerous short articles about current legal issues (e.g., employer email monitoring, child adoption abroad, the new Section 245(i) provision of the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act of 2000), but again, many of the articles are unsigned. Consider this a potential starting point, not the be-all-to-end-all for your research.
10 December 2003. EDITOR'S CHOICE. Lawyer-librarian Andrew Zimmerman authors this extensive guide to finding legal and factual information. Hosted by LexisNexis via its LexisONE portal, the guide provides brief explanations about specific aspects of legal, business and factual research. You can search the guide by selecting the option for querying the entire LexisONE site. You can also browse it using the comprehensive index provided on the front page of the guide. Entries include linked cross-references for finding related information. |
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