Research Help: Law and Legal Shortcuts Research Guide: Court Cases

Other Shortcuts

Here are some other great resources for court information

Supreme Court Compendium: Ref. KF8742.S914 2007
Cornell Law School's US Supreme Court Collection
The Supreme Court of the United States

Something fun

These sources may not help you with your research, but they may be fun.

Findlaw This link opens in a new window
Legal Web site, providing the most comprehensive set of legal resources on the Internet for legal professionals, corporate counsel, law students, businesses, and consumers.

Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries
With Law Library Card you get free access to Hein Online. The City of Fitchburg has a law library branch on Elm Street that you can visit during the hours of operation.

Best Bet

Lexis-Nexis is one of the oldest and best legal resources available. Aside from a legal news tools, it provides you with access to cases for both federal, state, EU and Canadian courts. You can gain access to Shepard's citations and patent searches. One of it's greatest legal resources is the law review search.

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic (Now called Nexis Uni) This link opens in a new window
Full-text documents from over 5,600 news, business, legal (including cases and legislation), medical, and reference publications with a variety of flexible search options.

Reading a Case Citation

Cases are published in a reporter. The case citation has several components as indicated below. The Reporter will be indicator as to whether the case is a state or federal case and which level of court -- district, appellate or supreme.