Practice Ready Litigation Research: Jury Instructions

Tennessee

Other States

• Selected State Jury Instructions compiles links to free online versions of state jury instructions, though keep in mind that many of the free versions available on the web are out of date.
• Check an in-state law library web page or call a legal reference librarian. Online access may be available through Lexis and Westlaw. 

Online Resources:

• Model Federal Civil and Criminal Jury Instructions (by circuits) 
  • Some circuits provide no jury instructions, others provide partial sets.
  • Consider looking at instructions from a circuit outside your own if your circuit has none.
  • Some circuits provide subject-specific jury instructions, such as instructions for employment law cases
• Subject-Area Jury Instructions
  • Jury instructions for a particular Subject-Area such as Trademark, Securities Law, Selected Criminal, Eyewitness Identification, Model Labor and Employment Law, Model Patent, and Juror Use Of Electronic Social Media.

Print Resource:

• Modern Federal Jury Instructions
  • Call Number: KF8984. M64 
  • Also available online through Lexis
  • 5 volume looseleaf set

Many legal publishers, bar associations, and legal groups release model jury instructions on all sorts of legal issues – business torts, securities, surety actions, antitrust, and medical issues, just to name a few. If you suspect there may be model jury instructions for your type of issue or lawsuit, try searching various combinations of search terms at http://www.worldcat.org (which will search thousands of library catalogs simultaneously) or even just Googling something like jury instructions criminal antitrust.

As always keep in mind that these instructions would need a lot of research to make them pertinent to your jurisdiction and up-to-date.