Research Guides: Free Legal Information: Getting Started

Beginning Research

Familiarizing yourself with the law and how to do legal research is the best way to understand your legal issue and use the resources available to you. These handbooks can help you do that.

Guide to Law Online

This guide is provided by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division. It is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information.

Legal Research for Pro Se Litigants

This short handbook provides an introduction to legal research for civil legal cases in the U.S. Northern District Court, but the general information can help anyone doing legal research. It includes: how to define the legal issue, start research, narrow your results (provided by the San Francisco Bar Justice & Diversity Center).

Locating the Law: A Handbook for Non-Law Librarians (to access the handbook, click the link and scroll down the page)

This book provides an introduction to sources of law, citations, and how to conduct legal research. It is a geared towards novice legal researchers and self-represented litigants (provided by Southern California Association of Law Libraries).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: How to Read a Legal Citation
Chapter 3: Basic Legal Research Techniques
Chapter 4: Legal Reference vs. Legal Advice
Chapter 5: California Law
Chapter 6: Bibliography of California Resources
Chapter 7: Federal Law
Chapter 8: Citators
Chapter 9: Assisting Self-Represented Litigants
Chapter 10: Bibliography of Self-Help Resources
Chapter 11: Availability, Accessibility and Maintenance of Legal Collections
Chapter 12: Major Law Publishers
Appendix A: Glossary of Legal Terms
Appendix B: Common Abbreviations in the Law
Appendix C: California County Law Libraries
Appendix D: California Law Schools

Legal Citations

A citation (or cite) in legal research is a shorthand method of identifying a specific legal source, such as a statute or published case. Legal forums (e.g. Federal District Courts, State Courts, or Administrative Law proceedings) have various citation rules, for example the federal courts require the Bluebook. The Bluebook is also used for legal scholarship such as law reviews.

The titles of primary legal authorities are usually abbreviated and the format of a cite is often standard for various sources (e.g. case cites are volume number, title, page). There can also be more than one citation for a publisher other than the official one, this is known as a parallel citation. The official citation is cited first, followed by, if necessary, the parallel citation.

Reading a Legal Citation

Here is an example of the various components of a legal citation adhering to the Bluebook citation conventions.

Party Names	Volume Number	Bluebook Abbreviation for Publication	Pages or Section Number(s)

Brown v. Board of Education	347	U.S.	483

Reading a Federal Code Section

Here is an example of the various components of a federal code section citation adhering to the Bluebook citation conventions.

Volume Number	Source	Section Number(s)	Year

42	U.S.C.	§ 1983	(2017)

Reading a California Code Section

Here is an example of the various components of a California code section citation adhering to the Bluebook citation conventions.

Code Title	Section Symbol	Section Number(s)	Year and Publisher

Cal. Penal Code	§	247	(Deering 2017)

Check out this video below for a further explanation of legation citations.