Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law

Take the law into your own hands

Do you have legal questions at home or work or as part of law-related coursework? Legal Research is the go-to book when you need the right answers fast. You'll learn simple research methods and standard legal writing styles that will help you quickly and efficiently:

• locate statutes, regulations, and case law


• ensure your research is current, and


• organize results into a legal memorandum for school, work, or court.

Completely modernized for the 20th edition, Legal Research covers both traditional research approaches and techniques for answering legal questions online. The examples and easy-to-understand instructions will help you master essential legal research tools in a snap, including:

• legal encyclopedias, periodicals, and treatises


• annotated and unannotated codes and statutes


• published state and federal court cases


• case digests and Shepard's Citations, and


• online search engines, free legal websites, and blogs.

Importantly, you'll also learn to narrow your results so you won't drown in an information flood when researching reliable, user-friendly online websites or in the local law library stacks.

Author: Cara O'Neill,Jessica Gillespie Gillespie
Publisher: NOLO
Published: 08/27/2024
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.90w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781413331929

About the Author
O'Neill, Cara: - Cara O'Neill is a legal editor and writer at Nolo specializing in bankruptcy
and small claims litigation. Cara authors several Nolo book titles,
including How to File for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, Chapter 13 Bankruptcy, The
New Bankruptcy, and Everybody's Guide to Small Claims Court. She
also coauthors Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law, The
Foreclosure Survival Guide, Solve Your Money Troubles,
and Credit Repair, and edits several more. Before joining Nolo,
Cara practiced law for over 20 years in civil and criminal litigation, bankruptcy,
and administrative law. During that time, she served as an administrative law
judge, took dozens of criminal and civil cases to jury verdict, appeared before
the California Court of Appeals, and taught undergraduate and graduate law
courses. She earned her law degree in 1994 from the University of the Pacific,
McGeorge School of Law, where she served as a law journal editor and graduated
as a member of the Order of the Barristers--an honor society recognizing
excellence in courtroom advocacy. Gillespie, Jessica Gillespie: - Jessica Gillespie works at Nolo in several capacities. As Nolo's Research Director, Jessica manages the editorial staff's research needs. She also cocreates many of Nolo's online legal forms, including those used in online LLC and corporation formation services, coauthors Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law, and writes and edits estate planning and personal injury articles. Before joining Nolo, Jessica managed prestigious document collections at New York University's Law Library and provided library research and support at a large Virginia law firm. Jessica's academic achievements include a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Long Island University, and an M.A. in U.S. History from North Carolina State University. She also did doctoral work on Progressive Era reform movements in the Appalachian South at the University of Tennessee.