Legal Research

Legal Research
Written By Sara Dudley

Legal research can be a daunting process. Below are links to mostly free and official sources to get you started.

Can’t find what government information on a website or at the library? Then consider drafting a request under the California Public Records Act (“PRA”) or Federal Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). Public funds pay for the government to produce information and you are entitled to that information, at no or minimal cost.

Legal Research Guides

AALL Guide to Evaluate Legal Information

https://www.aallnet.org/about-us/what-we-do/policies/public-policies/access-to-legal-information/

Published by the American Association of Law Libraries, this guide will help you ascertain if you are using a good source or “fake news.”

How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers

https://www.aallnet.org/knwlctr_publegal/how-to-research-a-legal-problem-a-guide-for-non-lawyers/

Published by the American Association of Law Libraries, this free, downloadable guide will help you navigate your first (or 100th!) legal research challenge.

Scholarship

Digital Commons

https://network.bepress.com/

Expert evidence from credible sources is often needed to support a legal argument. The Digital Commons can provide that information, at no cost. As the publisher states, “The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.

California Legal Information

CA Legislature

This is the official website for California's legislature. Its database contains the text of bills, proposed and enacted, from both Houses, since 1993. It is a particularly valuable resource for legislative history research.

CA Courts

This is the official website for California's judicial branch. It contains basic information about the court system in California, CA Supreme Court and Appellate court decisions from 1850 to the present, Judicial Council forms, and court rules. The data is provided by LexisNexis and are free to the public.

CA Regulations

All the sections of the California Code of Regulations are free and searchable online, with the notable exception of Title 24, the California Building Code. (To view the CBC, you must purchase it or go to a physical library. A large library, like the SF Public Library may have it, and many county law libraries will too, but check the catalogs first or call).

California County Law Libraries

County law libraries are free and open to the public (regardless of what county you live in), but generally in order to check out books or use certain resources you must be a member, which does cost a fee. County public law libraries are invaluable public assets as they provide free access to ordinary citizens to the codes, cases, and regulations that comprise our legal system. Here a few of the best-resourced:

The Federal Government

The Government Printing Office

The US government is the largest publisher of information in the world. The GPO is responsible for promulgating legal information from all three branches of government. I recommend THOMAS for legislative information, and GPO access for everything else.

THOMAS.loc.gov

"Thomas" is named for Thomas Jefferson and the site is run by the Library of Congress. The real genius of THOMAS is that it provides the legislative history of pending and enacted federal bills, including the bill's drafts, committee reports, and voting record.

Research references recommended by the Library of Congress itself, including fun stuff like the entire Federalist Papers: thomas.loc.gov/links/

The US Code

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collectionUScode.action?collectionCode=USCODE

The US Code are the laws of the United States, also referred to as statutes. The online version of the Code published by the government is always a year (or more!) out of date. This situation is challenging, as most members of the public are interested in recent changes to the law and how these changes might effect them. If you need a current version of the Code, options to consider: 1) a fee-based service, such as LexisNexis or Westlaw; 2) visit a local public law library and use their print editions of the US Code published by LexisNexis or Westlaw. Some law libraries also have an online subscription to LexisNexis or Westlaw, available for the public to use (policies differ; contact your local law library and ask); or search THOMAS (cited above), and find the bill as passed, if you have enough detail about a recent law to find it. The bill will tell you where it the law is codified in the US Code.

Federal Regulations

Code of Federal Regulations, 1994 - Present: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collectionCfr.action?collectionCode=CFR

The Federal Register, 1994 - Present: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=FR

Court Opinions - All States & Federal

Findlaw

www.lp.findlaw.com

The decisions of the US Supreme Court, Appellate and District Courts are supposed to be free and publicly accessible. The reality is that they are published in a scattershot fashion and listed on various government websites. The PACER database is published by the government, but is not free to use and can only be accessed once you set up an account, with a credit card. Therefore, best source of free federal court decisions and all other states to the extent that they are on the web at all, is www.lp.findlaw.com. "LP" means "legal professional." Westlaw bought FindLaw several years ago and divided the site into to two parts, one for the public, which is mostly message boards, and one geared towards legal professionals, which contains useful primary source material, including court opinions

Sara Dudley
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