C OST E FFECTIVE R ESEARCH AKA, FREE S OURCES ON THE W EB Ron Jones UC Law Library

F OOD F OR T HOUGHT 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.

H ERE 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.

H ERE 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.

S O WHAT MATERIAL IS ONLINE ? Case Law Codes/Statutes Regulations Court Rules Forms Secondary Sources

W HERE TO FIND C ASE L AW Court’s Website –e.g., U.S. Supreme Court, Ohio Supreme Court Legal Information Institute FindLaw Justia Public Library of Law

W HERE TO FIND C ODES /S TATUTES Federal –GPO Access –GPO’s Federal Digital System –Legal Information Institute –FindLaw

W HERE TO FIND C ODES /S TATUTES State –State’s website –Legal Information Institute Municipal –Minicode –American Legal Publishing –Municipalities website (via Google)

W HERE TO FIND R EGULATIONS Federal –GPO (CFR, E-CFR, Federal Digital System, Federal Register) –Regulations.gov –Legal Information Institute State –State Administrative websites

W HERE TO FIND C OURT R ULES Federal & State –Federal Judiciary –Court website

W HERE TO FIND F ORMS Court’s Website FindLaw Google

“A LMOST F REE ” L OW C OST L EGAL D ATABASES Casemaker VersusLaw Fastcase Loislaw

S EARCHING (M UCH ) S MARTER O NLINE

G OOGLE ’ S M ARKET S HARE

H OW G OOGLE W ORKS

W HY G OOGLE W ORKS Unlike other search engines which only search certain fields of a site, Google performs a “Full Text” search of the entire site.

H ERE ’ S AN EXAMPLE Quote: "Now, is intelligence always going to be 100 percent right in the future? It can't be.”

S EARCHING S MARTER 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.