Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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Some (maybe all?) Oregon courts are offering TurboCourt online document preparation for Small Claims litigants. I haven’t seen TurboCourt in action.

Visit the Washington County (Oregon) Circuit Court website and their TurboCourt link. Or, visit your own county’s Circuit or Justice Court to find out if they too have TurboCourt.

In the future, however, Oregon Judicial Department’s eCourt may be where document filing will take place. Here’s a press release on the rollout, which started in Yamhill County in June.

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Take a look at the Lane County Law Library Index to Legal Research Guides. It’s excellent and will just get better and better. They link to useful legal research guides from Northwest law libraries:

· Adoption
· Oregon Administrative Rules
· Bankruptcy
· Obtaining Birth Certificates
· Border Crossing Guide
· How to Find Oregon Appellate Court Briefs
· Consumer Information/Protection
· Criminal Law and Procedure in Oregon
· Debt Collection–Creditor’s Rights
· Foreclosure, Repossession and Liens
· Oregon Forms
· Landlord/Tenant
· How To Find A Lawyer In Oregon
· Oregon Legal Ethics
· Researching Oregon Legislative History
· Oregon Legislative Records
· Medical Malpractice Issues: Research Sources
· Name Changes in Oregon
· Using the Oregon Revised Statutes
· Finding Public Records in Oregon
· Small Claims Court and Procedures
· Traffic Violations

And, if you’re a Northwest law librarian with a legal research guide not included in this list, let the Lane County Law Librarian know!

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This is a shortlist of some basic, and frequently overlooked, Oregon legal research resources (and one non-Oregon title), for the new Oregon attorney or legal researcher. Most of these are in print version only, not online.

You don’t need to buy these, but you should know about them. Your local law library will either have or have access to the titles that are in print only.

1) Legal Information Buyer’s Guide & Reference Manual, by Ken Svengalis (updated annually, not online)
2) Oregon Legal Research, 2d edition (2007), by Suzanne e. Rowe (not online) (previous edition also useful)
3) Oregon Judicial Department Style Manual (print edition is dated 2002 and online 2002 edition is updated periodically at the OJD website)
4) Attorney General’s Administrative Law Manual and Uniform and Model Rules of Procedure under the APA (not online)
5) Oregon Public Records Manual (not online in full)
6) Other important Oregon AG Office publications
7) Oregon Practice Materials, from the University of Oregon Scholars Bank

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Some articles speak for themselves:

From: Law – “Finding Accurate Law Text Online Nearly Impossible” (from the Indiana Law Blog):

Excerpt: ‘… It sounded easy. Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s counsel, Denley Chew, slapped down some $2 bills and challenged a room of lawyers and legal researchers with laptops and iPhones to find the authoritative text of the landmark Fugitive Slave Act online.

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It is not unusual for someone to think it is easy to find a dissertation or thesis: sometimes it is, and sometimes not. “The Internet Tubes” have made the search a little easier than in the past, but “they” (the Internets, that is) have complicated it in a few other ways, namely, if the document is not in the Usual (i.e. Old Days) Repositories For Such Things, the world of places one has to search for another repository has expanded exponentially. The upsides are that you may be more likely to find what you are looking for AND you will find some other very interesting titles while you search.

1) Check with your local reference librarians (most have some kind of online reference so you don’t even have to get up or break a sweat).

2) Subscription databases (check also with your local libraries)
a) Dissertation Abstracts Online (Dialog)
b) ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing (and see their sidebar about searching Google for dissertations)

3)Miscellaneous

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Legal Research Plus blog has had (at least) two very interesting posts this past week:

1) Writing the book on citing unpublished and non-precedential opinions, July 27, 2009, by Paul Lomio:

Excerpt: ‘Today’s mail brought Volume 10, Issue # 1 (Spring 2009) of The Journal of Appellate Practice and Procedure. This issue contains Professor David R. Cleveland’s book-length (116 pages) article “Overturning the Last Stone: The Final Step in Returning Precedential Status to All Opinions.”…’ (link to full post)

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More free legal information – hurrah! See King County Law Library blog, KCLL Klues:

Free Federal Case Dockets Online

FreeCourtDockets dot com provides free court dockets from PACER (except for the U.S. Supreme Court, whose dockets originates from their own database). You must register (see their introductory information page) for access instructions.

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Having problems with the lawyer someone recommended to you or who you thought was recommended by an “online service” or a “best ever lawyers in the whole wide world” list?

It is not enough just to get a recommendation for a lawyer who can help you with your legal problem. You need to do a some preliminary research and have a conversation about fees and service with that lawyer.

If you do absolutely nothing else before you hire a lawyer, please:

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1) For an excellent lineup of free legal research databases, see Robert Ambrogi’s Legal.Online column: 10 Places to Get Free Cases: A Very Good Price, from the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, July 2009 issue. In 2 pages he gives links and pertinent information about each database’s coverage and caveats.

2) Another view of “free”: Can Free Information Make Us A Vendor-Free Library?, posted July 13, 2009, Paul Lomio, has some interesting ideas, excellent links, and thoughtful Comments.

3) See also my Oregon Legal Research blog sidebar, which links to guides to Free and Low-Cost Legal Research Resources.

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