Legal Research Websites

According to the 2014 American Bar Association (ABA) Legal Technology Survey, 50.8% of attorneys reported going to a free Internet/online service when starting a research project. 35.7% reported starting with a fee-based Internet/online service, and only 11.2% turned to print materials first. In the survey, “Forty-eight percent of respondents from firms of 100 or more attorneys report Google search as the one free website they use most often for legal research.”

The 2014 American Bar Association report reflects that lawyers are most likely to utilize the Internet for news, information on lawyers, company/corporate information, and public record information, while turning to fee-based formats for federal and state case law, treatise and secondary material, legal citators, and federal and state statutes.

AUTHORITY AND RELIABILITY

Some advice from the American Association of Law Libraries:

Content

The content of a resource must be reflective. If there is a constitutional change, the resource must promptly reflect that change; if a law has been amended, any discussion on the web must reflect the law as amended, otherwise, the Internet resource is not qualified for inclusion or citation in legal research.

Credibility

Authorship, research specialization and achievement, institutional and professional affiliation, medium of communication (e.g., professional journal) and publishers are all useful criteria to evaluate credibility.

Currency and Continuity

One of the worrisome issues surrounding many web resources is their high mortality rate.

Comparability

How do the legal facts or positions contained in the resource compare with facts or positions in other jurisdictions?.

Citations

Resources with citations tend to be more serious-minded than social or journalistic ones. Users should therefore accord higher preference to resources with citations.

Legal Research Websites

Legal Research Websites