LEGAL RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET

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Most law firms utilize subscription services like Westlaw and lexis for their legal research needs. These services provide a great deal of well organized information. A paralegal accessing one of these subscription services can save a great deal of time an effort, but at a cost.

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Westlaw and Lexis both charge a fee for their services. Unfortunately not everyone with a need to access legal information can afford one of these subscription service’s. The good news is there is a great deal of legal information available on the internet at little or no cost.

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My name is John M Broggi and today I am going to explain how to perform basic legal research on the internet. This PowerPoint will be presented in three sections and cover legal research in the area’s of : Case Law Encyclopedia‘s Legal Documents

Sections 1: Case Law : 

Sections 1: Case Law There are a number of internet options available that contain case law. Today I am going to be demonstrating Google Scholar. Google scholar started indexing legal opinions, law journals, and case law on November 17th 2009. After launching this new search feature, Google posted the following statement on their blog.

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“Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal.

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Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptability of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.”

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A researcher who may not be able to afford one of the subscription service’s will find it is sufficient for basic research needs, however it does have limitations. The lack of summaries at the beginning of each case requires the researcher to spend more time reading cases that may not be relevant thus increasing the amount of time spent researching. Overall weather you are unable to afford a subscription service, or you a successful attorney simply supplementing your research options you find that Google scholar is a good tool .

Section 2: Online Legal Encyclopedia : 

Section 2: Online Legal Encyclopedia The Cornell University Law school website has an abundance of legal information available. The option I am going to demonstrating today is the Wex Legal encyclopedia . First I will go to the Cornell University Law School Website at http://www.law.cornell.edu

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Section Three: How to obtain legal documents . : 

Section Three: How to obtain legal documents . Many legal document’s such as wills and trusts are available online at little to no cost. The website I am spotlighting in this section can be found at http://www.ilrg.com

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The sights I have outlined today: Google Scholar, The Cornell University Law School, and the Internet Legal Research Group are very useful tools . As the internet advances and legal information becomes more common place we will see these option improve and many new ones will become available. The future of research is electronic and for the time being these three sites will help you control your research costs.