Nolo Press title: Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law

Resource to assist staff and public alike in how to find and understand the law:

Since 1982, Nolo Press has published an excellent resource entitled "Legal Research:How to find and Understand the Law." (The 2007 edition was authored by Attorneys Stephen Elias and Susan Levenkind.) The Beaverton City Library has owned this title for many years and has the most recent copy available for checkout. Just recently I asked Jill Adams if we could have a copy purchased for the Ref collection so that a copy would be avaialable in-house both for staff to access when they might need to understand some legal topic better and also to be able to refer a patron who wishes to learn more themselves. We now have a copy that resides in Ref 340.072 LEG 2007 along with circulating copies.

The book is broken down into the following headings:
1) overview of legal research
2) overview of the law
3) putting your questions into legal categories
4) getting some background information
5) constitutions, statutes, regulations, ordinances
6) understanding case law
7) how cases are published
8) finding cases
9) Shephard's, Digests, and the Internet:Expand and Update your Research
10) how to create a legal memorandum
11) the legal research method
12) appendix of legal terms
13) index

Since we are not legal specialists, the above resource along with other library resources, such as the online database HeinOnline, that Jill Adams has posted information about in this blog, should be helpful to us.


Note 1: Don't forget to refer patrons to the Washington County Law library located in Hillsboro.
http://www.co.washington.or.us/DEPTMTS/law_lib/law_lib.htm There is an
information sheet at the ref desk that contains the address for them that we can hand out
to the public that also includes other kinds of special libraries in the area.

Note 2: Remember that there is also an Oregon Legal Research Blog, see link below: http://oregonlegalresearch.blogspot.com/, that Laura Orr, the law librarian for the Washington County Law Library periodically adds material to.

Marie