Articles Tagged with Free legal research resources

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If you are not a licensed Oregon attorney and you need to perform thorough legal research (vs “googling a legal problem,” yikes), you have free access to some of the same legal research databases that Oregon attorneys use: Fastcase is one of them and you have remote access to it through your State of Oregon Law Library (SOLL). (Check out their Blog while you’re at the SOLL website.)

You also have free access to NOLO (formerly Nolo Press) databases through the SOLL.

Remember, Google isn’t enough when you have to appear without an attorney before a judge. I recommend consulting an attorney* or a professional law librarian**, but not everyone (or even most) has access to either, let alone both.

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Your State of Oregon Law Library give you FREE access to NOLO publications and the FASTCASE legal research database:

NOLO (aka Nolo Press): “NOLO provides access to full-text legal reference publications written for consumers that allow individuals to learn about specific topics of law.”

FASTCASE: “Fastcase collection includes the United States Code, United States Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Cases; and cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions, attorney general opinions, and session laws for Oregon, Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington.”

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People like “free.’ People like getting free content from other people who paid for the content. Long live the free-loader, long live the person who spends $20 in time and gas looking for a free parking spot instead of paying $10 for a paid space! It’s the principle, isn’t it?

But sometimes getting “free” is about the journey and the satisfaction earned when putting one’s search skills to the test. Here’s one way to do both, from Aaron at Musings about Librarianship:

5 services to help researchers find free full text instantly & a quick assessment of effectiveness

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The Legal Research is Easy blog post, Hone Those Research Skills, is California-based, but the lessons it teaches apply to law students in every state where public law libraries are supported. Be a good money manager, and get smart: seek out free and cheap legal research resources, human, print, and digital:

Excerpt:

“A while back, I read an article in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (Bar proposes revised practical skills requirements) by Lyle Moran that caught my eye. Apparently, the California Bar Association wants to include 10 hours of “practical” legal instruction while law students are still in school. While the article did not say what specific skills the Bar want’s new attorneys to focus, might I offer a suggestion? Might I propose that in that 10 hour mix, law students spend at least three (3) hours at their local county law library to see what exactly their local county law library has to offer.

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From the Law Office Manager website:

The County Law Library: Don’t overlook this free and valuable legal resource


“According to just about every legal management article, webinar, or podcast, the landscape of the legal market in the past few years has changed—dramatically. Clients, it seems, are firmly in the driver’s seat. And with an abundance of legal service providers, these clients are demanding efficient and cost-effective solutions, leading many firms to rethink their infrastructures and find innovative ways to do more with fewer resources.

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When you need legal research advice, turn to the legal research experts, professional law librarians, most of whom are able to share their expertise freely, or low-costly (so to speak), which is good value indeed when you need accurate, timely, and comprehensive information.

Great law librarians keep up with the vast world of legal research resources: dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of journals and websites and lawyer and law librarian listserves, networks, and professional associations (e.g. AALL). A Law Librarian’s Continuing Education also includes reading local, state, and national judicial, legislative, and regulatory news, and related news in the foreign and international legal world.

So, make sure the librarian you consult for legal research advice is Keeping Up With the Legal Research Joneses or, more to the point, Keeping Up With Opposing Counsel, whose access to legal research resources might be funded a whole lot better than yours:

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The State of Oregon Law Library (SOLL) is providing statewide access to 2 valuable legal research databases, previously unavailable for remote access to non-attorney Oregonians. (No legal research database is cheap, but pooling resources and making Really Good Value legal research databases available to everyone supports “access to justice” goals: to educate students, voters, and anyone else with an abiding lifelong intellectual curiosity about law, lawmaking, judicial process, legal rights, government, and politics.)

Link to EBSCO and Fastcase, from the SOLL Legal Resources webpage:

“1) EBSCO Legal Information Reference Center

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LoisLaw is dead; long live Fastcase/Loislaw.

Research Tip: Good word searches won’t get you very far if you don’t update your research.

(And all good legal researchers know how to “update the law.”)

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We try to update this Oregon Legal Assistance Resource Guide at least twice a year (you can also find the guide from the WCLL Legal Research Resources website), but additions, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome. You can “Leave a reply” to this blog post or you can “Contact Us” via email.

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Short answer: No. (But your questions do give us ideas for future blog posts!)

Longer answer: The two professional law librarians currently posting to this blog serve a county of 500,000+ residents (and the rest of Oregon – and other states and countries on occasion) and run a public law library so we just don’t have the time to answer everyone’s questions. (But you can visit your own county’s Law Library and research your question!)

Longest, and perhaps more useful, answer for those with legal reference or research questions: Please read the legal research tips we provided in our August 2010 blog post:

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