Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

Published on:

By

What would you name a race horse, assuming the name would have to be a law-related, lawyer, or law librarian, or librarian name?

I learned recently that I have a relative who has to name race horses – lots of horses. I used to think it would fun to name a horse, but it’s not that much fun at all if you have to come up with a dozen or more names every time the stable gives birth, so to speak. (There are quite a few collective nouns for horses.)

There are horse naming rules (and more rules) but there are also fun horse-naming tips. Use your favorite search engine and try these searches: rules horse names or naming horses

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The Washington County (Oregon) Law Library tries to keep its list of “Oregon Legal Research Resources NOT Online” up to date and we welcome feedback from researchers.

Sometimes we discover that NOT online materials have gone online (yay!) and sometimes we discover yet another resource a legal researcher needs is still not online, so email us or leave a Comment if you notice that we need to update our Not Online list.

You can link to it from our Legal Research Resources page or our Documents Index. Just look for the “Not Online” title.

Published on:

By

If that beautifully presented meal you gaze upon was in fact prepared by unwashed hands, harbors e-coli, was cooked 3 days ago and never refrigerated, and has been licked by the cook’s cat, dog, and ferret, would you eat it?

Would you pay good money for original artwork, without guarantees of originality, papers of provenance, and proof of seller’s ownership?

Why then would you risk your life, liberty, property, and family by relying on “law” that might not really be “the law?”

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

Subscribe to Oregon and U.S. court and case law e-summary services from the Willamette University Law School service: Willamette Law Online.  It’s a painless way to stay informed about new caselaw:

1) 9th Circuit Case Summary Service
2) Oregon Court of Appeals Case Summary Service
3) Intellectual Property Case Summary Service
4) Oregon Supreme Court Case Summary Service
5) United States Supreme Court Case Summary Service

For example, they alerted me to this upcoming U.S. Supreme Court copyright case:

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

It’s only a matter of time before someone asks about “the burrito case, you know, the ‘ultimate fighting’ case.”

This might not be the only Oregon burrito, ultimate fighting case, but if anyone asks, start here: 

Oregon Court of Appeals: State vs. Debuiser, A145479 (decided April 4, 2012)

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The good news out of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon is that overall bankruptcy filings for the district were down in 2011 compared to 2010.  There were 17,151 cases filed in 2011, compared with 19,741 in 2010.  If you compare the 2011 numbers with the total case filings from 2005 (32,168 total case filings), the 2011 statistics appear promising.  However, we still receive many questions about filing for bankruptcy.  So, we’ve created a new legal research guide on bankruptcy, available on the Washington County Law Library’s website.  As usual, if you can’t find a document on our website, check out our handy, alphabetical document index.    

Published on:

By

We work with a lot of public library reference librarians and library assistants and are always on the lookout for materials that could help them help their public library patrons who ask legal reference and legal research questions.

One day we’ll write that quick and dirty legal reference guide for public libraries, but in the meantime, the Drake Law Library in Iowa has linked to, and annotated, a list of many of my favorite guides at their website that explain the unauthorized practice of law, differences between legal information and advice, and legal research techniques:

Self-represented litigant resources

Published on:

By

Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics Guys aren’t the only ones who want to burst a few of your bubbles and shake up your world of assumptions:.

I’ve come into close contact (!) with these 3 books & writers in the past few weeks and thought I’d note their titles here for my book-loving readers:

1) “Quiet” was terrific (and was written by a lawyer), but none of the reviews I’ve read so far have mentioned how funny the author is when she lets her droll sense of humor loose:

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

If you’ve been following the news regarding the proposed administrative rule eliminating Native American mascots in Oregon public schools, and wanted to know more administrative rules and administrative law in general, you’re in luck. The Washington County Law Library has a brand new administrative law legal research guide available on its website.  You can find more Oregon Legal Research blog posts on administrative law, including an invaluable post on researching the history of an OAR, using the “administrative law” tag.  As always, many other legal research guides are available on the law library’s website, and you can always peruse the document index for quick document retrieval.

Published on:

By

Bob Ambrogi’s LawSites blog post on the new book, A Thorough Guide to Freelance Lawyering, by Alaska attorney Kimberly L. Alderman, will intrigue a lot of lawyers – and law librarians (!).

Freelancing is not for everyone, but if you have an adventurous spirit and can figure out how to pay the bills until your practice is up and running, this book might be a good place to begin to plan for the future.

Contact Information
The information provided on the Oregon Legal Research website and blog is for research purposes only. We do not provide legal advice, nor do we endorse any person, product, or company

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2015 – 2025, Oregon Legal Research
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design