Articles Tagged with Legal research

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I like this new blog: Legal Research is Easy, in part because it’s funny and in part because Legal Research is NOT Easy, which makes the blog name also very funny, or perhaps ironic. (Potential irony is too deep for me, so I’ll just enjoy the ride.)

The Horse to Water blog post describes a Q&A familiar to any public law librarian and very likely any legal aid or court support staff front-line staff member. You see, we do try to make legal research as easy as possible, but ….

Excerpt: After the law librarian shows the patron some excellent, truly excellent, research resources that would go a long way to answering the question posed:

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Quick and Dirty Research Strategy:

1) Make an outline of your Quick and Dirty Legal Research strategy and take good notes as you proceed, especially keeping track of citations, effective keywords, and other results you find along the way.

2) Search Google or other search engine: You can find official and unofficial statutes, appellate court briefs, law review articles, case law, subject-specialist lawyer and law professor blogs, and much more.

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Take your research skills to the limit:

1) Read “The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet: Conducting Effective Investigative & Legal Research on the Internet” 12th edition (as of 8/12)

2) Read: “Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide – Completely Updated – July 2012,” by Sabrina I. Pacifici, Published on July 14, 2012:

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How to Find a Case Online (using free resources)
(if you have the citation)
 
It isn’t always possible to use a physical reporter to locate a case using a citation.  If you don’t have access to a bound reporter, here is a quick overview of a few of your free options for locating cases online.
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Have you ever wondered about the questions public law librarians are asked? Have you ever thought that answers to lawyer and non-lawyer legal questions are “all online?”

Think again!

The Oregon Special Law Library Association (ORSLA) asked the question. Read the answers (and a few samples below). Public law librarians around the country will recognize these:

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You will not find a link (as of today) to Oregon appellate court cases at the OJD Self-Help website.
You will find a link from the OJD homepage, their Appellate Case Info page, or their Publications page.
This is not a horrible thing. Really!
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If you have a Washington or California state legal research or resource question, and especially if you’re new to legal research, check out that state’s law libraries legal research resources: websites, blogs, and maybe even just use the telephone!

1) Washington State has some excellent county law libraries.

2) Mary Whisner, University of Washington Law School librarian, keeps a list of Washington State Law Blogs up to date.

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I have written before about how you cannot prepare for a serious court proceeding using just the resources you find on the “free” web. (And, aren’t all court proceedings serious?)

That is, if you have an adversary who knows how to research law and legal procedure, if you will appear before a judge in a court of record (as opposed to, e.g. a small claims court or traffic court where you are not expected to know “the law”), if you want a fair shot a winning your case, then:

You need to do the research – and that means researching case law and statutes, And, that is just the BEGINNING:

(And, even in small claims and traffic court it helps to do your research.)

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If you’ve never, ever researched the law, I recommend you start at the beginning and work your way up:

1) This quick online (and PDF) guide from AALL LISP is an excellent starting point: How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers

2) Next, if you are brave enough, move on to the hard-core books on legal research, many of which you can find at your local libraries, including books from Nolo Press and HALT, both of which have excellent legal research guides, online and in print.

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Pro se (aka pro per or self-represented) law library patrons have a tough time of it. If you didn’t learn in high school or college how to learn, how to study, or how to develop a research strategy, then the legal research process will be a very steep uphill battle. Some of our law library non-attorney patrons learn very quickly that Willy-Nilly is not a research strategy. Others never figure it out and public law librarians hear a lot of “I just need a yes or no answer to my question.”

We, public law librarians, are not the only ones with this problem. I just came across another group of people who are recipients of these types of questions and the answer to one person’s situation pretty much sums up what we in law libraries have had to figure out how to say tactfully (forgive the garbled syntax – it’s Friday and you know what I mean! :-):

The January 4, 2008, Library Link of the Day post on a January 1st, 2008, article in the Boston Globe, by Candice Choi, about self-publishing, “Got a Manuscript? Publishing Now a Snap.” The story sent me off on a winding road that ended up at a blog site where I found this excerpt:

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