LibGuides: Free Legal Research Resources: Home

Introduction and Purpose

This guide presents briefly annotated links to the sites discussed by Sibyl Marshall at the NBI seminar, "Find It Free and Fast on the Web," on December 12, 2018. Topics covered in this guide are: Finding Free Legal Research Sites and Free Case Law, Government Resources: Federal, State, and Local; Finding Practice Tools, and Legal Ethics Online and in Social Media.

Featured Websites

Below are a few of the websites that feature most prominently in the CLE. While there are lots of great free resources out there, these stand out in terms of accessibility, coverage, and professionalism.

Legal Information Institute -- Cornell Law
Legal Information Institute is a small research, engineering, and editorial group housed at the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, NY. Their collaborators include publishers, legal scholars, computer scientists, government agencies, and other groups and individuals that promote open access to law, worldwide.
The Public Law Library
The Public Library of Law is the world’s largest online database of free law. It brings free materials from across the Web together in one place, and adds hundreds of volumes of law that has previously only been available with a subscription.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar also provides access to 50+ years of case law from all over the country.
Justia
Justia's mission is to advance the availability of legal resources for the benefit of society. They are focused on making primary legal materials and community resources free and easy to find on the Internet. The company provides Internet users with free case law, codes, regulations, legal articles and legal blog and twittterer databases, as well as additional community resources.

Congress.gov This link opens in a new window
Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC's Congressional Research Service.

Gov Info
Gov Info provides official, authenticated versions of most government administrative and legislative publications, including the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Reigster.

Subject Guide

Sibyl Marshall

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