Additional Resources Free Low Cost Legal Research Lawlibguides At

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 2:54 PM

additional resources free low cost legal research lawlibguides at

Seattle University Law Library 901 12th Avenue | Seattle, WA 98122 | 206-398-4220 Law Library | Research Guides | About Us The law librarians and library staff at Robert Crown Law Library are here to help you! You can find the latest information about our hours and services on the library homepage. There are several ways to contact us: Zoom: Drop in to our virtual reference room during our Reference Desk hours to ask any questions. Make an appointment: Online and in-person appointments with the reference staff can be made from the library homepage.

This guide provides links and suggestions for searching in resources that are freely available (or available for a low cost) when conducting legal research. It is organized into secondary sources and primary sources. Secondary Sources will cover general research platforms with significant legal materials as well as selected research guides. Primary Sources will specifically address low cost legal research options, as well as free legal research options across all government branches. Sources include: For foreign and international resources consider:

myAU | AU Library | myWCL | Library Home | myLEAGLE Library Account Library Home | Research Guides | LEAGLE Catalog | E-Journals & Articles | Library Databases | Frequently Used Resources | Ask a Librarian Welcome to the research guide for free and low-cost legal research. Our goal is to help you find accurate and useful legal information when you don't have access to the expensive "big three" legal databases: Westlaw, Lexis, or Bloomberg Law. We've divided the guide by type of legal document (legislative, judicial, administrative) with additional sections on secondary sources and materials for our local jurisdictions (the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia). This guide was last updated 28 January 2025.

This guide discusses both free and low-cost options for legal research. The free resources are listed first, with the low-cost resources following. If a resource charges a fee, it will be noted in the description. These low-cost options are usually available through a subscription and are not pay-as-you-go or pay-per-use. Here are the major free resources we cover in this guide: Major legal research databases can be prohibitively expensive for some researchers.

There are, however, a number of online alternatives that are either free or less expensive than Lexis and Westlaw. This guide provides an overview to different types of free materials, under the section Free Sources of Legal Materials, and also summarizes the features and costs of less expensive databases within the section of... There are several databases which provide access to primary source materials on their own sites, without any charge to the user. These sites vary in terms of the types of materials collected, the scope of their coverage, and their search options. We have created a table for each type of material which includes the major online sources and their coverage. Because the availability of state legal materials varies so widely, we have only included descriptions of the federal materials available for free online.

To find free state legal information, please consult our state law research guides. The free sources we provide contain a great deal of primary source legal material. They are, however, much more limited in terms of search options and finding aids than fee and subscription based sources. In particular, free sources rely almost exclusively on keyword searching and browsing to find cases, rather than headnotes and digests, which are used in Lexis and Westlaw. For this reason, the free sources may not be the best or most efficient sources of information. Secondary sources are often a great starting point for legal research.

However, many secondary sources are copyrighted and not available for free online. However, there are some useful free secondary sources, summarized below. A visit to a local public law library (see More tab) is another option for finding free secondary materials. Google Scholar searches articles in academic journals (both legal and non-legal) and links to any available free online versions. Click on the "articles" radio button and enter your search terms. To pull up advanced search features, click on the menu button at the top left-hand side of the screen.

Use the facets on the left-hand side of the screen to narrow your results. Law Technology Today (LTT), which is published by the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, provides a free full-text online law review/journal search engine that searches the full text of over 300 online law reviews,... JStor has an Open Access journals page that allows users to access some items without a subscription. The Directory of Open Access Journals is an online directory of open access, peer-reviewed journals on a range of topics (including some law journals). The following are important considerations to keep in mind when conducting research online. Primary Sources Primary materials are more likely to be available online than secondary materials.

The U.S. federal government has especially made a point of trying to make official documents available online. It is also less expensive to publish electronically, so many governments are moving toward online-only government publication policy. Secondary Sources Secondary sources are less likely to be online (for copyright, use, and cost issues). However, many law journals are now published in both print and electronic formats. Coverage Dates With the exception of archival projects, most legal information on the internet is available beginning in the mid-1990s.

Citators There are no free citators for ensuring that a law is still good. Most law libraries provide online access to their research guides. Although they may contain information specific to the library's collections, these guides provide references to treatises, Web sources, major case law, legislation, and other relevant sources that can aid in one's research. If your legal research is state-specific, you may want to browse the list of online research guides of a handful of major law libraries in that state (see examples below). Another strategy for locating relevant legal research guides is to conduct a keyword search in your internet browser, using the terms "research," "guide" as well as the subject matter you are researching. For example:

© The Regents of the University of California. UCLA School of Law. All Rights Reserved. ABA Journal Features breaking legal news, analysis from thousands of legal blogs, and investigative legal journalism. Issues are available from 2004 to present. ABA Legal Technology Resource Center This free search engine searches the free full-text of over 400 online law reviews and law journals, as well as document repositories hosting academic papers and related publications such...

Google Scholar Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Sources include articles, theses, books, and abstracts. Some documents may be paywalled, but these are typically accessible on-campus. IngentaConnect Provides the full text or table of contents (depending on subscription) of academic and professional research journals JSTOR Offers hundreds of top journals in humanities, business and social science in page-image format. Coverage varies by journal, but begins with volume 1 and covers through about 5 years ago. Law.com Dictionary This dictionary provides accurate and understandable definitions for technical legal terms.

Nolo.com NOLO is a publishing company whose mission is to create and publicize legal resources that are easily understood by people without legal training. They create books, software, and a website of legal information. Their website includes a free encyclopedia of the law. Oyez.org The Oyez Project at Chicago-Kent is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality Tour of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.

SSRN Legal Scholarship Network The Social Science Research Network includes abstracts and articles that have been submitted for publication. WEX Cornell's Legal Information Institute's community-built, freely available legal dictionary and legal encyclopedia. The purpose of this research guide is to provide users with access to free legal resources located on the web. The guide is organized by topic instead of by source, allowing users multiple access points to the same information. Below are just a couple of the websites that feature prominently in this research guide. Although there are many places one could find free legal information, the below sources seem to be the best balance of reliability, ease of use, and depth of information.

Before diving into a research project, it's essential to have a strategy for how you will conduct your research. At the Law Library, we've developed a research worksheet that you can use to help organize the information you've been given and develop a plan for your research. Feel free to make copies and use it as you're given research assignments. While in law school, you have been lucky to have unlimited access to Westlaw and LexisNexis without having to worry about the cost. Non-academic employers rarely have this kind of unlimited access. Both are amazingly rich resources but they are also expensive.

Searches in Westlaw can range any where from $0 to $100's per search! It is this expense that makes it so important to know about low-cost and free sources for the law.

Additional Resources Free Low Cost Legal Research Lawlibguides At

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This Guide Discusses Both Free And Low-cost Options For Legal

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