I meet more Oregon attorneys who don’t know about this wonderful news than attorneys who do know, so here goes:
Starting January 1, 2010, the OSB BarBooks database will be available and free to ALL members of the Oregon State Bar.
(Many Oregon county law libraries will have subscriptions to the database, too.)
Read more about the database or contact the OSB (not me, please), if you have questions.
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.
An excellent, and fast, tutorial on free and low cost legal research tools is available from the Duke University law librarians: The Unexploded Cow’s Guide to Legal Research.
My previous posts on free and low-cost legal research are here and here (with additional imbedded links).
An excellent, and fast, tutorial on free and low cost legal research tools is available from the Duke University law librarians: The Unexploded Cow’s Guide to Legal Research
My previous posts on free and low-cost legal research are here and here (with additional imbedded links).
Law school libraries are excellent sources of legal research guides. You can find many of them with a quick Google search using your topic keyword and then simply adding the words “research guide.” Another useful search word is “pathfinder.”
This Guide to Free and Low-cost Legal Research is from Georgetown Law Library.
As you might imagine, law library associations are another source of excellent guides, and our D.C. law librarian colleagues are a wonderful source, as you might suspect, for federal law research guides. for example, see their recently updated:
This class for Landlords only: Landlord Study Hall 2009
Previous Oregon Legal Research blog posts about free Oregon legal information, here and here and here.
(And for those of you of a certain age or of a certain frame of mind, remember Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, which, of course you can find free on the web.)
A post at the King County Law Library blog reminded me to update my own sidebar list of “Legal Research – Free” list with ALSO — see Legal Resources On-line: Check This Out:
“American Law Sources on-Line (ALSO) provides free legal resources online. This website includes information about law libraries, federal courts, bar associations, legal forms, and government websites….” (from KCLL Klues)
At WisBlawg, Bonnie talks about Archival Case Law Free with FindACase. The fine print isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but you have to decide that.
We love all the hoopla about Public Resource dot com and their commitment to making the law accessible to all, without cost (or too many bells and whistles we don’t always need).
However, there is another legal research database that does almost the same thing, but seems quite happy to stay quietly under the radar:
The PLoL is a portion of the Fastcase database, and is offered freely by their owners.
Publicly accessible free and low-cost legal research services are being added to the web every week, or so it seems. No, it’s not really happening that frequently, but there are more options available now than a year ago and more are expected in the next year. For the latest exciting news, see the announcement from Public Resource dot org about the some extremely public spirited lawyers and companies and look for a “grand opening” in early 2008.
From the Announcement:
WASHINGTON, D.C. / SEBASTOPOL, CA—November 14, 2007—Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.
You used to have free and searchable access to federal district court cases only on a district by district basis, but the situation is improving. Librarians and lawyers have for years been arguing that these are government funded databases and access should be available for all for a nominal charge or for none at all.
LexisONE® has offered free case searching for a long time, but neither they nor anyone else offered free federal district court case searching until now. JUSTIA has launched a searchable database of just these cases. The database is new and not all the bugs have been worked out (it’s free, folks), and is worth a look-see. Visit Justia or go directly to their list of cases databases at cases.justia.com/.
There are LOW-COST legal research databases for those who want and need a bit more control over your searching options. A guide to these low-cost legal databases is at the University of Washington Law School Library (and say thank you to the law librarians for all their excellent guides.)
Oregon Legal Research Blog