Legal Research

Free Online Legal Research: Lesser Known Links to Amaze Even the Most Experienced Researcher

By Ted Tjaden

Connie Crosby and I will be co-presenting with two American law library colleagues (Jane Edwards and Marlene Coir) in a few weeks at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Windsor, this year a joint conference with the Michigan Association of Law Libraries.

Our topic is “Legal Research Free and Fast!” and we will be making available a jointly-authored paper that provides an overview and analysis of “free” versus “fee” online research tools.

My personal challenge for the presentation – and I assume perhaps a challenge shared by my co-panelists – is what free Internet-based, law-related research resources do you show or discuss to a room full of mostly experienced law librarians? On the Canadian side, we will of course include the obvious primary source online content (such as CanLII, various government websites and the like) and the better online guides and other sources of free commentary.

While there will be the opportunity for the Canadians present (including me) to learn more about U.S. online legal research (and vice versa for the Americans present to learn about Canadian online legal research), the challenge remains: what lesser known but high impact web links to free legal resources would you discuss? What would be in your top 20 (or 50) list?

Although perhaps not the best examples of what I am talking about would be sites ranging from the Canadian Law List to the B.C. Law Reform Database or even things such as the freely available Table of Abbreviations for the Index to Canadian Legal Literature from Westlaw Canada.

Make SLAW proud by listing any “must include” sites in the Comments field below (and we will of course acknowledge SLAW and the suggestions posted here at our panel session).

What’s in your Favourites list?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).