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Federal Legal Research: Non-Governmental Resources

Commerically Produced Resources

Findlaw This site has access to cases, regulations and statutes, but also allows you to search for information about legal topics written for non-lawyers.

 

Google.com While google is hardly the place to do in-depth legal research, it is a great place to begin looking for basic legal terminology and can guide you to sites that will help you in your research.

 

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a good way of finding law review articles, which can be persuasive, or finding case law itself. Unlike proper legal research platforms, the citation feature here is not a citator, and cannot be used in place of one to ensure currency of case law.

 

Justia Here you will find cases, regulations and statutes, but also some explanations of legal concepts in plain language.

 

Non-profit Resources

How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers This guide is produced by the American Association of Law Libraries, the national body for law librarians, and will walk you through how to research in legal materials.

 

Indigo Book This is a free version of the rules of legal citation. It not identical to The Blue Book, but the rules are identical, and it is available as a public resource.

 

Legal Information Institute Cornell's Legal Information Institute, or LII, contains a great deal of federal primary law, as well as Wex, a combination of legal encyclopedia and legal dictionary.