What Are the Best Sites for Legal Research?

One of the best sites for legal research is Nolo.com. At the Web site, you can do legal research by topic in one of Nolo’s Law Centers, or research through one of Nolo’s features, which include:

• Nolo’s Legal Encyclopedia with articles on legal topics in an easy to understand style,
• Ask Auntie Nolo with questions and answers on a wide variety of legal topics,
• Nolo’s Law Dictionary,
• Calculators for number-crunching, and
• Statutes & Cases.

Findlaw.com is another Web site for free legal research. The Home Page is divided into sections according to who will be doing the research: For the Public, for Business, for Students, for Legal Professionals, and for Corporate Counsel. You can go directly to CaseCode, its section for researching cases and statutes.

The Internet Legal Research Group is another good Web site for free legal research, and is divided into several sections, including:

• Legal Profession,
• Academia,
• Legal Research,
• E-Mail Updates, and
• Attorney Referral Network.

The Legal Research Section is divided into three sections: Law Runner, ILRG Legal Bookstore, and ILRG Web Index. In the Law Runner section under Legal Research, you can go to the Global Index, or the USA Index. The Global Index includes home pages for every nation in the world, including all islands and territories. The USA Index has a listing for each state and then includes some or all of the following links to the following within each state: the state’s home page, judicial branch & case law sources, legislative branch, executive branch, and miscellaneous state government sites.

The two key fee-based resources on the Internet for legal research are Lexis and Westlaw. Lexis is one of the premier fee-based legal research Web sites for cases, statutes, rules, and regulations. Westlaw is the other well-known fee-based Web site for online legal research and legal reference materials.