COST EFFECTIVE RESEARCH

AKA, FREE SOURCES ON THE WEB

Ron Jones

UC Law Library

ronald.jones@uc.edu

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• Everything is available freely on the Internet.

• Confident that sources are trustworthy.

• Google’s complex search algorithm provides the best possible results.

• Wikipedia is trustworthy/authoritative.

HERE IN THE REAL WORLD• A great deal of primary source material (federal &

state) IS freely available online.

• Secondary Sources, while not as prevalent, are available.

• You can manipulate Google’s search engine to focus your results.

• Wikipedia, while not authoritative, should not be dismissed as irrelevant.

HERE IN THE REAL WORLD• Time is money!

• While tempting, Google shouldn’t always be your “go to” resource.

• The Dark Web.

• There are certain aspects of legal research that simply cannot be duplicated by any “free” resource. So don’t bother trying.

SO WHAT MATERIAL IS ONLINE?

• Case Law

• Codes/Statutes

• Regulations

• Court Rules

• Forms

• Secondary Sources

WHERE TO FIND CASE LAW• Court’s Website

– e.g., U.S. Supreme Court, Ohio Supreme Court

• Legal Information Institute

• FindLaw

• Justia

• Public Library of Law

WHERE TO FIND CODES/STATUTES

• Federal– GPO Access

– GPO’s Federal Digital System

– Legal Information Institute

– FindLaw

WHERE TO FIND CODES/STATUTES

• State– State’s website

– Legal Information Institute

• Municipal– Minicode

– American Legal Publishing

– Municipalities website (via Google)

WHERE TO FIND REGULATIONS

• Federal– GPO (CFR, E-CFR, Federal Digital

System, Federal Register)

– Regulations.gov

– Legal Information Institute

• State– State Administrative websites

WHERE TO FIND COURT RULES

• Federal & State– Federal Judiciary

– Court website

WHERE TO FIND FORMS

• Court’s Website

• FindLaw

• Google

“ALMOST FREE” LOW COST LEGAL

DATABASES• Casemaker

• VersusLaw

• Fastcase

• Loislaw

SEARCHING (MUCH) SMARTER ONLINE

GOOGLE’S MARKET SHARE

HOW GOOGLE WORKS

WHY GOOGLE WORKS

• Unlike other search engines which only search certain fields of a site, Google performs a “Full Text” search of the entire site.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE

• Quote: "Now, is intelligence always going to be 100 percent right in the future? It can't be.”

SEARCHING SMARTER

• Use advanced search features– Limit by domain

– Limit by wording or exact phrase

– Limit by file type

– Limit by topic-specific search engines• Google Book Search, Google Scholar, ect.