Legal Research

Legal Resources News & Notes

1L Survival Wiki
Check out the How to Survive Your First Year of Law School wiki.

Top 10 CALI Legal Research Lessons, Fall Semester 2008
1. Introduction to Secondary Resources by Brian Huddleston.
2. Legal Research 101: The Tools of the Trade by Sheri Lewis.
3. How to Find Case Law Using the Digests by Brian Huddleston.
4. Anatomy of a Case by Brian Huddleston.
5. Updating/Validating Case Law Using Citators by Rebecca Trammell.
6. American Law Reports by Kimberli Morris.
7. Periodicals Indexes and Library Catalogs by C. Andrew Larrick.
8. Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies by Sarah Gotschall.
9. Legal Research Methodology by Wendy Scott & Kennard Strutin.
10. Finding Statutes by Kit Kreilick.
Source: All Time Lesson Runs Since 2008-08-01.

New Member Pictorial Directory: 111th Congress Now Available
New from GPO: "Published biennially by the Joint Committee on Printing of the U.S. Congress, the Congressional Pictorial Directory provides a color photograph of each member of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It also includes information about a Member of Congress' length of service, political party affiliations, and Congressional district. Also contains pictures of the President, Vice President, and House and Senate officers and officials. Files are available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) only."

2008 Financial Crisis Primer
Check out Chicago-Kent's 2008 Financial Crisis Primer. The Primer "brings together some of the best and most accessible materials related to the crisis. It provides resources such as articles on the failure of regulation, the Congressional testimony of key players, editorials on the government's bailout of banks, books on previous financial debacles, and the voices of people who have lost homes in foreclosures."

Search All Law School Web Sites at Once
If you want to search law school sites collectively, try Search All Law Schools on the CALI webpage. Possible uses? Research tuition figures, law professors, academic concentrations and law school clinics. Thanks to Marianne Alcorn and Beth Difelice of the Ross-Blakely Law Library. The all law schools search was created using Google Custom Search.

State and Local Government Links
The Library of Congress? Newspaper & Current Periodical Research Center provides links to state and local government web sites.

Free Access to English Reports, 1220-1873
Free access to the English Reports from 1220-1873 is now available from the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). The English Reports database contains 124,882 cases and the full text of the Reports are searchable. Users are then provided with the original image of a case when it appears in the search results, sorted in likely order of relevance (date ranking may also be used). The cases are may also be browsed by year or alphabetically.

Sources: Law Librarian Blog, WisBlawg, Virtual Library Cat's Eye View

Full post as published by LexLibris on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).