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Thursday Thinkpiece: Internet Legal Research on a Budget

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Editors note: This week’s thinkpiece was timed up to publish concurrently with Judy Gaskell’s review of the same book. Slaw wishes to thank Carole Levitt and Judy Davis for extending such a significant excerpt, along with Judy Gaskell for her review.

INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH ON A BUDGET

by Carole A. Levitt and Judy K. Davis. © 2014 American Bar Association. Reprinted with permission of the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. (ABA LPD 2014)

(Excerpt: pp. 17 – 20; 47 – 58)

INTRODUCTION: WHY A BOOK ABOUT FREE ONLINE LEGAL RESEARCH?

According to the American Bar Association’s 2013 Legal Technology Survey Report, 96 percent of respondents report they conduct legal research online but that they are less satisfied with free resources than with fee-based resources. The 2012 Research Intelligence Group’s “New Attorney Research Methods Survey” found that new associates (five years or less) spend about 31 percent (14.5 hours per week) of their time conducting legal research. For those in practice less than two years, the percentage rises to 35 percent. The new associates (5 years or less) reported that they used fee-based online resources for eight of their 14.5 hours of legal research per week while spending four hours per week using free or low-cost online resources. Fee-based resources are used more often by large firm associates (74 percent frequently/always) than small firm associates (46 percent).

With cost-conscious clients scrutinizing legal bills, lawyers cannot afford to depend on fee-based resources the way they used to, especially if there are reliable free resources available. This book3 was written to help lawyers quickly find reliable free (or low-cost) resources online and to learn to use the resources effectively so they can become more satisfied using free resources. Our goal was to write a book that would save you time and money and help you avoid frustration. We wanted to share what we have learned about the best legal research sites we have “scoped out.” We have tested and evaluated each site, described how to actually use the site (often step-by-step), and included numerous screen shots to better illustrate the steps.

The following two partial entries, USA.gov and FDsys (Federal Digital System), have been excerpted from the book. Please download the PDF to read the full excerpt for each entry.

Chapter 5: GOVERNMENT, ACADEMIC, AND ASSOCIATION PORTALS AND DIRECTORIES

USA.GOV

USA.gov (http://www.usa.gov), formerly FirstGov.gov, is the federal government’s document search portal. USA.gov searches millions of web pages from all levels of the United States government: federal, state, local, tribal, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories (see Figure 5.1 in the PDF download). Although results occasionally bring back court opinions, this is not the right site to search for them. Instead, see Chapters 3 (Legal Portals and Directories), 8 (Casemaker), and 9 (Fastcase), where free case law research is discussed.In addition to offering keyword searching, USA.gov offers the ability to browse by a government service, topic, agency, or government contact. To browse (instead of keyword searching), select one of the five tabs listed below the search box on USA.gov’s home page: Services, Blog, Topics, Government Agencies, and Contact Government. Once you select one of these tabs, such as the Government Agencies tab, for example, a drop-down menu appears where more links are revealed. If you select the Services tab, you will see that USA.gov also serves as a forum in which to conduct business online with government agencies. For instance, you can change your address, apply for a passport, shop government auctions, e-file your taxes, and more. USA.gov’s internal search engine (the search box on USA.gov’s home page) is powered by Bing. You can use the search box to keyword or phrase search government documents. Unfortunately, USA.gov provides no search tips about how to construct a search and use Boolean connectors and we were unable to find any at Bing (at least not easily)… We will provide a brief Bing/USA.gov tutorial… (Download the PDF to continue reading this excerpt.)

FDSYS (FEDERAL DIGITAL SYSTEM)

The Government Printing Office (GPO) maintains a website called the Federal Digital System (FDsys), which is a database that provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government. The FDsys website arranges its database into Collections, which include Budget of the U.S. Government, Code of Federal Regulations, Congressional Bills, Congressional

Hearings, Federal Register, Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, and U.S. Court Opinions, among others.

The same search protocols (keyword/phrase/citation searching and Boolean and proximity connectors) are used throughout the FDsys Collections. Results can be displayed and sorted in the same way throughout all of the Collections, so we will use this section to explain how to search FDsys, in general. However, a different menu of search criteria options appropriate for each Collection will pop up after you choose to search a specific Collection. For example, if you choose the U.S.C. Collection, its search criteria would include a search by Title, U.S. Code Amendment, or U.S. Code Future Amendments (among others), while the Collection of U.S. Court Opinions would include much different search criteria options, such as Party Name or Court Name (among others). Because of these differences and because there are Collections that focus on different topics, we will discuss them individually in later chapters and then refer you back here for a refresher on general FDsys search protocol strategies.

FDsys researchers can keyword or phrase search through all of FDsys’s Collections from the search box on FDsys’s home page at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/home.action. Another option is the Advanced Search at http://linkon.in/y2uMZC. Researchers can also browse Collections or retrieve a document by citation via links available on the home page. Whether you are performing a simple or Advanced Search, you can create simple or complex queries. We will highlight some of the search queries available at FDsys, but for more detailed information and examples, see the FDsys Help page (http://linkon.in/I6uqKF)… (Download the PDF to continue reading this excerpt.)

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