Guest post, from Lee Van Duzer, Washington County Law Librarian, Hillsboro, Oregon:
As we socially distance ourselves and physical spaces are increasingly closed, it is important to revisit online legal research options. The following are free general legal research tools to help you work from home.
Case Law & Statutes
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.
LoisLaw’s e-doors are closing and Fastcase has stepped up to the plate. Read all about it:
1) Transition
2) FAQ for LoisLaw subscribers (about those treatises …)
“The library is a growing organism.” [Ranganathan, the fifth of “Five Laws of Library Science”]
Visit the new website of the Multnomah Law Library for your legal research adventures. Note that Saturday hours have returned, remote and in-library database access is expanding, and the online catalog will earn its keep as a time-saver.
And don’t forget the Oregon legal research databases I featured in last week’s blog posts, from the State Law Library and OSB.
Oregonians Rejoice: EBSCO Legal Information Reference Center has arrived. (Yes, thank the State of Oregon Law Librarian!)
This database contains NOLO Legal information books and much more.
This database is available to all Oregonians. (Other states, public libraries, and law libraries have their own access protocols.)
While PACER is way ahead of many state e-court systems, it is still flawed. Enter PacerPro. Give it a whirl, free (for now), and read about it in this article:
From ABA Journal: “Service offers a better way to search federal court records than PACER,” Mar 1, 2014, by Robert Ambrogi.
We’ve updated our guide to legal research, and other, databases in Oregon county law libraries:
OREGON COUNCIL OF COUNTY LAW LIBRARIES (OCCLL): ONLINE DATABASE SUBSCRIPTIONS
(or from this Washington County Law Library webpage – under “O” for OCCLL).
When The Google isn’t good enough and you need Good Value (i.e. not full-service & not expensive) for full-text, all-cases or statutes (or almost all) legal research database searching:
1) Law Library of Congress: How to Locate Free Case Law on the Internet
2) Georgetown Law Library’s Free and Low Cost Legal Research Guide
Casemaker now has subscriptions for individual, unaffiliated (with a bar association or law school) legal researchers. Visit the Casemaker website for instructions and prices.
In the world of low-cost legal research databases, Casemaker and Fastcase are the primary vendors providing group-rate services to bar associations. This is good for lawyers, clients, and for non-lawyer bar association members.
Other low-cost research databases exist, including LoisLaw, VersusLaw, and others. (See the list on this blog’s sidebar or link directly to the Georgetown Law School Library’s Free and Low Cost Legal Research Guide.
Oregon Legal Research Blog