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Low Income Individuals and the Law
I have the pleasure of presenting some information to University of Alberta Law students today who are taking a seminar course titled “Low income individuals and the law”. To prepare, I gathered some free legal research/legal content resources for a handout.
Free law links (PDF)
What would you add to this list?
Here are a few suggestions:
I would provide the link to Ted’s sites in addition to the Best site http://www.legalresearchandwriting.ca/reference.htm#10.
I would mention public libraries as a source to get access to a computer and assistance in using the computer. They will not be able to provide legal advice but they may also be in the position to know services that can assist.
I would include individual court website and ministry sites and Public legal information sites- in particular linking to the guides to navigating the systems.
For family cases – link to the federal site to the guidelines and calculator. For provincial offences, tickets, etc. I would provide the link to website that provides information on these kinds of issues.
Great ideas! Thank you
http://www.legaltree.ca
http://library.queensu.ca/law/CanadaTable.htm
http://www.irwinlaw.com/cold
http://www.emp.ca/higher-education/glossary-of-legal-terms.html
There are also a number of Wikibooks on Canadian criminal law (such as http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Law), though I have not reviewed them in any detail, so I don’t know how complete/correct they are.
Thanks for the reminder of the Canadian Online Legal Dictionary from Irwin Law. I should have had it on my handouts!
The courthouse libraries should likewise be mentioned, as they are staffed and housed with resources (including computers and databases!) that are law-specific, something that is often generally lacking in public libraries.
Thanks for mentioning courthouse libraries, Donald. Alberta Law Libraries, as an example, provides a variety of services for lay people as well as legal professionals, both online and on location in a variety of municipalities around the province.
I would also recommend the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta (formerly the Legal Resource Centre). They have a large number of excellent publications on a variety of issues, many of which could affect low income Albertans and other Canadians and which are written in an easily accessible way. CPLEA also produces a number of other sites, including Blogosaurus Lex, LawCentral Alberta and LawCentral Canada.
I don’t know any courthouse libraries that I’m in with any frequency which are open to the public, low income or otherwise.
oh “Meh,”you’re going to need to come out to the promised land of the west. BC and Alberta will welcome members of the public, low income, high income middle income, questionable income. In short: everyone (so long as they pass through security of course) to their libraries.