Getting a jump start on your legal research

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center has put together a host of resources to help you jumpstart your legal research, available via its ABA Lawlink Web site. Information is categorized by federal, state and international resources; includes a listing of legal associations; provides resources on electronic discovery, ethics and much more. A drop-down menu navigates through the 17 resource topics.

The LTRC's staff, which includes librarians, selects and evaluates resource data. In addition to its Web site, the center publishes a monthly e-newsletter, Site-ation, of sites relevant to legal professionals.

Among the materials available as part of the "federal resources" and "international resources" is the compilation from the Global Legal Information Network, hosted by the Library of Congress — a database of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources. The National Center for State Courts site linked from ABA Lawlink has a detailed map of each state's court structure; CourTools, developed by the center, is a set of 10 trial court performance measures that offers court managers a balanced perspective on court operations.

State resources include such information as ethics opinions and rules of professional conduct by individual state, as well as a listing of state bar admissions requirements and state lawyer assistance programs. And among the "business and reference resources" is a listing for "search systems," which purports to be the largest listing of public records on the Internet.

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