Free and Low Cost Legal Research
by Susan D. Salisbury, Attorney at Law

All Rights Reserved to
MacLaw User Group

 

FREE WEBSITES

FINDLAW

By far the most useful free internet research site is found at www.findlaw.com. This site has articles by lawyers and publishers and documents from government agencies. However its biggest draw is that you can search federal case law and download copies of cases free. To do so go to the findlaw site. Select either U. S. Supreme Court or Federal Circuits as the library to search and type your search in the search box.

You will then get a "hit list" -- a list of cases containing your search terms. By clicking on the case name, you can read the whole case and download it to your computer if you want.

The findlaw site also has links to other state and federal resources.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LLI

http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/citation.table.html --- at this cite you can access a complete, up to date copy of the bluebook on legal citation put in a folio searchable engine.

Cornell sells some CD s with law resources on them for reasonable prices. At http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/disk.htm 610 historic decisions of the United States Supreme Court available on CD-ROM for $25.00. They also have an American Legal Ethics Library which includes the State of California, for $25.00

The Cornell Web site also has an extensive listing of short legal treatises with web connections to source materials. To reach it you go to the LII website and click the words "Law About". This will take you to an extensive listing of subjects. If you choose Administrative law, for example, on the left hand side of the screen you will see a short treatise on the general principles of administrative law. On the right hand side a list of URLs containing source materials.

FEDERAL JUDICIARY HOMEPAGE

http://www.uscourts.gov The Federal Judiciary homepage has a list of links to the different circuits, and, within the circuits to the individual district courts. Many of the district court homepages have local forms in Adobe pdf format which you can download to have their local rules.

UNITED STATES CODE

http://www.uscode.house.gov/usc.htm U. S. Code in searchable format

http://www.lawjobs.com/default.html free listing of law jobs.

MAC-BASED LAW LIBRARIES

http://www.lawlibraries.com/about.html is a new site that is now stocked with thousands of Laws, Opinions, Rules, Forms and other legal resources that can be searched, viewed, printed and downloaded using WebSonar. The subscription rate is $100.00 per month for the fee services. Sherlock plugins are available for Mac users.

Browser Based Document Management For Less than a Penny per Day <http://www.websonar.com> Telephone: (250) 838-7874

LOW FEE AND FREE

There are a number of places where you can get access to California, and other, case law and legal news. The fees change regularly. most of these vendors are aware of this site and the competition which exists here. Ask each for current rates. Let them know you discovered them at MacLaw. Some offer us discounts.

http://www.jurisearch.com gives you unlimited online access to California Cases back to 1934 and California Codes. It has a list of links to California Trial court websites and has judicial council forms in Adobe pdf format which you can download and fill out on screen if you have adobe acrobat reader-- you do not have to have the full version of adobe. As of this writing the cost is $39.00 per month.

http://www.accesslaw.com as of this writing for $29.00 per month you can have unlimited online access to California cases and codes. If you subscribe to their CD service which gives you a new CD with California Cases and codes every quarter, the online service is free.

http://www.netlawlibraries.com has California cases and codes, and civil jury instructions. As of this writing access to the civil jury instructions is free. The subscription is $50.00 per month for the fee services. They also offer a daily rate of $10.00 per day which is useful for occaisional users.

http://www.americanlegalnet.com has unlimited access to California Cases and codes, forms and civil jury instructions for $29.00 per month. The Judicial Council forms may be completed online from either Macintosh or Windows operating systems. MacLaw Members receive discounted pricing.

http://www.versuslaw.com gives you access to the case law of all 50 states and U. S. Supreme court and Federal Circuit court decisions for $6.95 per attorney in the firm per month. (NO that is not a typo Six dollars and ninety five cents per attorney in the firm per month).

http://www.loislaw.com This website offers various pricing plans as low as $50.00 per month. It offers access to several different states and federal resources.

http://www.callaw.com-- This is a subscription news service with the last six months of case decisions-- some free services are free. Free services include legal classifieds and news stories

http://www.lawnewsnetwork.com-- an online legal newspaper. some articles and discussions are free others cost a fee. You can subscribe to specialized news service for IP, Employment and Tech law for $108.00 per year-- This price includes e-mail notification of recent decisions, access to a practice area part of their website and other news and commentary relating to the practice area you choose.

CALIFORNIA BAR ASSOCIATION

http://www.calbar.org

CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT

The State of California and its related websites has information which can be invaluable and save a trip to the law library.

The main website is at http://www.ca.gov -- this is the homepage with links to all of the agencies which have information on the web.

http://ccr.oal.ca.gov/ California Code of regulations on the web in searchable form.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov this is the California Judicial Web Page-- The best thing on is the judicial council forms in adobe pdf format. They are in what is called a zipped file-- that is compressed. You need to to have the zip utility to open them. You can get this as a shareware utility at various places on the web.You cannot fill these judicial council forms out on the screen unless you have the full version of adobe acrobat, but you can open them and print them out. With the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you can easily create fields on the forms that allow you to fill them out on screen, print them and save them in filled out form.

You can also access Supreme court and Appellate court opinions decided in the last 60 days at this web site. The opinions are not indexed. You will have to know the name of the decision you are looking for. There is also a separate listing of opinions rendered in the last 60 hours.

This site also contains a list of links to California trial court web sites. Most of the trial court websites include local rules, listings of telephone numbers for judicial offices, and often include adobe pdf format local forms.

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/forms.html has some workers compensation practice forms in Adobe pdf format which can be downloaded from the net. Worker's compensation regulations are part of the California Code of Regulations and can be looked up at that website, mentioned above.

http://www.insurance.ca.gov -- the website of the California Department of Insurance has a wealth of information about insurance companies-- It contains lists of admitted and non-admitted insurers. For the admitted insurers it lists the name of the agent for service of process. It lists all licensed agents and brokers. In addition it has complaint profiles (i. e. how many complaints received) about different insurance companies.

Bottom line-- if you have business with any California Government agency, or your clients are regulated by any California Government agency, you should check this web site.

MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY CODE SITES

http://www.municode.com Municipal codes for Hemet, Irvine, San Jose, San Diego and other municipalities

http://www.codesite.com/la.htm L. A. City Municipal Code

http://www.bpcnet.com Municipal codes for about 50 California cities and counties including Los Angeles County, San Anselmo, Camarillo, Temecula, Pasadena, Oakland (as well as municipal codes from other states).

http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/infoctr/charter/index.htm San Francisco City Charter.

The findlaw site has a list of links to Municipal and County Codes.

CALIFORNIA BUSINESS RECORDS
(From: Sarkis Jacob Babachanian, Esq.)

California business law practitioners on MacLaw might like to know ourSecretary of State's office finally (and after substantial prodding by yours truly) put corporate and LP records online at:

http://204.147.113.12/list.html

Other interesting Secretary of State look-ups can be found at:

http://www.ss.ca.gov/business/business.htm

Also, the LA County Clerk/Registrar-Recorder has fictitious business names online at:

http://regrec.co.la.ca.us/FBN/fbn.cfm

Thank you, Sark, for these helpful links!

NOT STRICTLY LEGAL

http://www.knowx.com Public records online. This is a relatively low fee service. You can search the Secretary of State's corporate records for most states, look up property by address or owner name. This is very useful when you need to figure out who and where a defendant is. For example if you know the address of the property but you don't know who owns it. With respect to corporations, they list the agent for service of process and the address of the agent. The usual cost is around 50 ¢ to search and $6.95 for the record. The ability to get this information so rapidly makes the price more than worth the cost.

The site also offers business profiles at some greater expense and searches for individuals.

http://www.dataquick.com/consumer/home_value.html buy a list of comparables from Dataquick for residential property for $9.95 Dataquick also has professional level real estate comparable information and has demographic information as well.

http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/forms/ downloadable copyright forms. (free)

http://www.napps.com/napps.htm National Association of Professional Process Servers-- they have listings for most states and some foreign countries. This is an invaluable resource for finding people to serve papers out of your area or out of state. Between this site and the know.x web site out of state defendants present no challenge at all.

The following topics are discussed on this page:

Ed Siebel has created a pdf file with hyperlinks to many California sites. It is a great resource which you can download by clicking here:

Ed's California Links

Alan Armstrong has provided the following
additional links:

The CFR is at:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/index.html

The USC is at:

http://uscode.house.gov/usc.htm

The California Codes are at:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html

The California Civil Jury Instructions are at:

http://www.netlawlibraries.com/jurinst/ji_toc.html