Most of the information furnished in this report came from the guide for non-lawyers furnished by the American Association of law libraries, legal information service for the public. Other information came from the databanks of United Citizens For Legal Reform (UCLR).
Clarify in your mind the exact legal question you want answered. Write the question down so that you are asking the same question each time you encounter a new source.
Determine the subject matter and the locality. You must first determine which court or government agency can resolve the conflict before beginning legal research. For instance is the conflict under State or Federal jurisdiction?
Most law books are cited in the order of volume number, book, and page. For example, 410 U.S. 113 would signify volume 410 of United States Reports, page 113. Statutes are cited by statute title and section number, such as 42 U.S.C., 1983 for title 42 United States Code, section 1983. A handy list of abbreviations is found in either of the law dictionaries, Black's or Ballentine's.
Public Library: This source will have some codes, texts and self help materials. Sometime a branch library will have less than the main library if you live in a Metro area.
County, Court, Or Law School Libraries: These libraries are open to the public and contain all the books talked about here.
Depository Libraries: These libraries contain federal materials and are located at most law libraries, larger public libraries and universities are required to be available to the public.
Self-help books and kits containing instructions and forms are available in the UCLR sales library. Some may also be found in public libraries and even some court clerks and legal aid offices to help non-lawyers with routine matters. These may include divorce, bankruptcy, traffic tickets, wills, contracts and leases, landlord- tenant, small business, and many other subjects. These are usually written by lawyers and may save hours of research.
Practice aids and form books are intended for lawyers, but can be useful for anyone. Some examples of practice aids are Shepard's Causes of Action, Am. Jur. Trials, and Am. Jur. Proof of Facts, which give guidance in what evidence a court must be given and how to proceed. Form books aid in drafting legal documents or documents that need to be filed in court. State form books are available for most states. General form books include Am. Jur. Legal Forms, Am. Jur. Pleading and Practice Forms, West's Legal Forms, Hyman's Basic Legal Forms, and others.
Legal encyclopedias are a good starting point to get an overview of a topic. There are two general legal encyclopedias: Corpus Juris Secundum (abbreviated C.J.S.) and American Jurisprudence 2d (Am. Jur. 2nd). Also, many states have encyclopedias for state law. Begin with the index, try under different synonyms. The text will contain many footnotes leading to further sources.
Texts and treatises can also yield useful general information. These contain the law on a specific subject, sometimes a specific jurisdiction, and often contain forms. The briefest are the Nutshell Series. More depth is given in West Publishing Co.'s Hornbooks or comparable publications. Multi-volume encyclopedic treatises give very complete information for many subjects.
Articles printed in journals or law reviews published commercially or by law schools or bar associations may also be useful. Look for your subject in printed or computer indexes such as Index to Legal Periodicals or Legal Resource Index (Legal Trac).
Codes contain legal rules known as statutes, regulations or ordinances which are mandatory, meaning that courts must follow them. These are accessed through an index which refers you to a numbered section. They are updated by supplements or pocket parts, or else are in looseleaf form. Most public libraries and all law libraries will contain a copy of the local state code, and may also contain city or county ordinance codes and codes of state administrative agency regulations. United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.), or United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.) will be used if the jurisdiction is federal. Regulations of federal agencies are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.).
Reports and reporters contain options (sometimes called decisions or cases) written by courts to explain how and why certain legal rules were used to resolve the dispute in a particular lawsuit. These rules constitute the "common law," and are followed by courts deciding later cases with similar facts and issues to be resolved so that consistency may be maintained. Decisions of a higher court will be mandatory, that is, must be followed, if coming from a higher court in the same jurisdiction or from the United States Supreme Court. If a decision is not mandatory, a court may still find it persuasive and follow it.
With few exceptions, these cases are from courts of appeal rather than trial courts. (the most common exception is decisions from federal district courts reported in Federal Supplement, abbreviated F. Supp.) Opinions are not written or published in every case.
Cases decided in the United States Supreme Court are reported in the United States Reports (U.S.) and reprinted in the Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct.) and United States Reports Lawyers' Edition (L>Ed). Cases from intermediate United States Courts of Appeals (also called U.S. Circuit Courts) are printed in Federal Reporter, first, second and third series (F. and F.2d and F.3d). Federal Supplement (F. Supp.) contains district court cases. State appellate court opinions are printed in state reports in many states, and reprinted in Regional Reporters, which contain several states, including Atlantic (A. and A.2nd), North Eastern (N.E. and N.E.2d), North Western (N.W. and N.W.2d), South Eastern (S.E. and S.E.2d), Southern (So. and So.2d), and Pacific (P. and P2d.). Many states no longer print their own states reports, so their newer decisions are found only in the Regional Reporters. If a decision is printed in more than one place, you may find more than one citation to it, which are called parallel citations.
Finding opinions in reports may be done in various ways. Reports are not arranged by subject, nor are the set indexed. Often a reference may be found from text or footnotes of text, encyclopedias, or other cases. Annotated codes will list cases which have cited a statute following the text of the statute. Lawyers and law schools can find cases using computer databases, though these are expensive and may not be available to the public. Otherwise, digests must be used.
Digests are the traditional means of finding cases once the above have been tried. Digests are published for most states and several of the regions that correspond to the regional reporters. There is also a federal digest, and American Digest that covers all jurisdictions in ten-year increments. The most commonly used digest system divides the law into about 400 topics. Each topic is subdivided into principles or points of law which are each assigned a "key" number. Pigeonholed under each key number are brief paragraphs abstracted from cases, which summarize what each case says about that point, and citations to where each case can be found. It is possible to go directly to the topic in the digest and scan through the key numbers, but it is usually less confusing to start in the Descriptive Word Index to the digest. This index uses common words to lead to the right topic and key number. The digest also contains a Case Table, which can be used to look up a citation if only the name of a case is known.
American Law Reports (A.L.R.) can be a very helpful resource. A.L.R. contains "annotations" which review a legal topic in depth, analyzing court cases from all jurisdictions on the subject. It can be used like a text or as a finding aid for cases in all jurisdictions on a topic.
Reports and digests for certain courts or topics also exist. These cover bankruptcy, military justice, education, labor tax and many others. Administrative agencies, which often act as tribunals in their areas of jurisdiction, also publish reports of their opinions, often with digests.
Looseleaf services are useful hybrids which pull together text, statues, regulations, and opinions of courts and administrative agencies on specific important topics that need constant updating. Examples include Standard Federal Tax Reports or United States Tax Reporter, Employment Practices Guide, Bankruptcy Law Reporter, Consumer Credit Guide, Family Law Reporter, Criminal Law Reporter and many others.
Check supplements. These sometimes appear as "pocket parts" inserted into the back covers of volumes to provide updates and new material.
Check citators, of which Shepard's is the most common. These must be used to tell whether the validity of a case has been affected in some way, such as being reversed or overruled. They are also used to determine if one case has been cited by another. Instructions for use, illustrations, and abbreviation tables are contained in the preface to each volume.
You'll keep reading the same legal rule. You may notice that once you have thoroughly covered all the sources listed above, the same legal rule, whether set out in statute, regulation, or court opinion will appear in several places. You can usually take this as confirmation that your research has been complete enough to give a reliable answer to your legal question.
A lawyer may still be required to help in finding and understanding legal information. Word of mouth, the Yellow Pages, or local bar associations may help you find one.
A law librarian can help. Check with local courts, bar associations or law schools, or call the American Association of Law Libraries.
United Citizens For Legal Reform can help. Go to member preview site at:
http://www.atps.com/uclr/uclr66.htm
E-MAIL shlc@money-finance.us