Free Legal Research on the Web: 1. General Legal Research Sites
Legal research and legal statistics are invaluable tools to understanding the legal system and the world that we live in. Legal research is known as the process of finding and analyzing data and information that is vital to assist and support legal decision-making.
1. General Legal Research Sites
There are many free legal research sites on the Internet. The sites described below are generally considered to be some of the best for legal research. Most of these sources are free.
* Goodson Law Library provides access to many online legal information sources from the Legal Databases & Links page. In addition to primary law from U.S. jurisdictions, you can access Comparative and International Law material and Research Guides for various legal topics as well as many other sources of legal information.
URL: http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/
* Findlaw: Provides links to online legal resources arranged topically and by user. Includes state and federal primary legal material, as well as legal material from other countries. Also provides forms available for purchase.
URL: http://www.findlaw.com
* Hieros Gamos is a legal information portal for a wide variety of legal and government information, organized in a directory format.
URL: http://www.hg.org
* Justia: Provides free access to a variety of legal information.
URL: http://www.justia.com
* Legal Information Institute: Cornell Law's extensive collection of legal material including Supreme Court decisions, U.S. Code, U.S. Constitution, Federal Rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure. The "Law About" pages group links to primary legal resources based upon topic.
URL: http://www.law.cornell.edu
* LexisONE: A free selection of material from LexisNexis (requires registration). Its Legal Web Site Directory provides links to more than 20,000 law‑related Web sites that were selected for their relevancy by legal practitioners. Access to about 6,000 free legal forms. Limited to the last ten years for many state case law databases.
URL: http://www.lexisone.com
* Public Library of Law provides free access to primary sources in U.S. law, including federal and state cases, statutes, regulations, and constitutions. Legal forms are also available. The Public Library of Law was created by the makers of Fastcase (see section IV, Low-Cost Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw), and also includes ads for fee-based content through the Fastcase service.
URL: http://www.plol.org
* WashLaw Web: Large and diverse collection of web links to legal material, maintained by the Washburn School of Law. The information is arranged by jurisdiction and topic.
URL: http://www.washlaw.edu