Legal Research Tools
- Thomas @ Library of Congress
- Guide to the Law of the United States @ Law Library of Congress
- Federal Law Collection @ Cornell – starting point for locating range of executive, legislative and judicial materials.
- Federal Resources @ FindLaw
- Wex | Legal Information Institute @ Cornell – a worthy successor to Cornell’s famed “Law about…” pages; collaboratively created, free public access to:
- ALSO! – American Law Sources On-Line
- American Legal Ethics Library @ Cornell – research site for legal and judicial ethics rules and issues.
- Center for Professional Responsibility @ ABA
- Court Rules, Forms and Dockets @ LLRX – staggering set of links to over 1400 sources for court rules, forms and dockets, virtually every set of court rules for every federal and state jurisdiction in the country.
- EDD-ucating Yourself About Electronic Discovery (aka “The Strongest Links”) – killer collection for locating online resources about e-discovery issues, assembled by well known e-practice gurus Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.
- FindLaw
- FindLaw Library – useful “A-Z” listing of links to legal topics.
- Freedom of Information Act Resources
- Freedom of Information Act @ U.S. Department of Justice
- How to File a FOIA Request @ First Amendment Center
- State and National Freedom of Information Resources
- GovEngine.com – pragmatic web portal with national scope for locating essential federal, state and local government and court websites.
- Guide to Law Online @ Law Library of Congress
- Guide to the U.S. Federal Legal System: Web-Based Publicly Accessible Sources @ LLRX
- Introduction to Basic Legal Citation @ Cornell
- Law Library Resource Exchange (LLRX) – superb resource for articles about doing legal research on the Internet.
- Legal Information Institute @ Cornell
- Model Rules of Professional Conduct @ ABA
- Municipal Codes Web Library @ LexisNexis – covers a majority of states, including much of California.
- National Center on Poverty Law
- Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys (2006) – download PDF version, by chapter.
- Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys (2006) – web-based version, with embedded links to referrenced cases, statutes and other authorities.
- Poverty Law Manual for the New Lawyer – primer for the new (and not-so-new) legal services advocate, with solid overviews of major categories of poverty law practice.
- Research Guides @ Hastings – likely too generic for most practitioners, but a few are specifically useful, including:
- University of Michigan Documents Center – extensive links to federal and state resources and data.
- Zimmerman’s Research Guide @ LexisOne