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Free Internet Legal Resources Portal

 

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Admiralty and Maritime Law

Bar Associations

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Business Information

  • Bloomberg
    Freely access financial news from around the world and find company "snapshots," tracing stock price, company news, profits, and outlook.
  • Big Charts
    Build your own interactive investment chart at this site, which bills itself as the most advanced charting service in the world.
  • The Business Journals
    This site offers breaking business news, user can choose market area covered from a drop-down menu of locations.
  • Department of Labor
    The U.S. Department of Labor's website offers assistance with disability resources, hiring, the Affordable Care Act, equal employment opportunity, and compliance assistance, along with many other topics.
  • EDGAR
    EDGAR (the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system), makes available the data which publicly-traded companies include in the forms  they are required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
  • Moody's Investor Service
    Although an account is required to access many of the offerings of this venerable bond credit rating service, users may freely access ratings highlights and news, special topics, the United States fiscal outlook and the weekly market outlook according to Moody's.

  • NASDAQ
    Official site of the NASDAQ Stock Market featuring free real-time stock quotes, stock exchange prices, stock market news, and online stock trading tools.

  • New York Stock Exchange
    Follow the market in real time.

  • Securities and Exchange Commission
    The website of the SEC contains information for investors, brokers, accountants, EDGAR filers, and small businesses. Access the laws and regulations under which the SEC operates.

  • Standard & Poor's
    One of the big three credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's website offers other free financial information services. You can follow the Dow Jones in Europe, Asia and the US, and track stock performance and commodities indices. You must be a registered user to access ratings, but registration is free.
     

Charleston and Charleston County

  • Charleston County Government
    Search deeds, mortgages, plats and state, federal and UCC liens. Pay taxes online or search records for real and personal property. Search court records, the current inmates at the sheriff’s office, and the Master-in-Equity’s foreclosure auction list.
  • City of Charleston
    Access city council meeting minutes, business license information, municipal court records and dockets, and find out what business loans are available through the city.
  • Post & Courier
    Read the local news online and search the paper's archives.

City and County Codes

  • American Legal Publishing: Online Library 
    Includes a collection of South Carolina codes for : Blythewood, Camden, Dillon, Edgefield County, Folly Beach, Folly Beach (Meeting Minutes), Goose Creek, Greenville County (Code), Greenville County (Meeting Minutes), Kingstree Frames, Mt. Pleasant, Newberry County, Prosperity, Richland County, South Congaree, West Columbia, and York County.
  • Codes.gov
    Public.resource.org's comprehensive repository of current and archived municipal and state safety and administrative codes.  The directory structure takes some getting used to. 
  • Municipal Codes
    City code links from around the U.S. from the Municipal Code Corporation, many from the state of South Carolina. Click on "Online Library" to search for free.↑ back to top ↑

 

Federal Government Information Resources

  • Administrative Decisions
    Quick access to federal administrative agency decisions on the web, maintained by the University of Virginia Library.
  • American Memory
    A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, U.S. Congressional documents and debates 1774-1875
  • BillMaps
    Tool for following legislation as it moves through Congress. Presents bill information such as names of sponsors and voting history. Click on the Google Map bubbles to discover who sponsored and/or voted for a bill. A summary of the bill is provided on the map page.
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics
    International, national, regional, state and municipal economic data
  • Citizenship Resource Center
    The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offer this resource for those considering becoming U.S. Citizens.
  • Congress.gov
    Currently in beta, this site, created by the Library of Congress, allows you to search: all legislation introduced in Congress since 2001; the Congressional Record since 2011; and member profiles since 1973.
  • CyberCemetery
    Provides permanent public access to web sites and publications of defunct federal agencies.
  • Data.gov
    Tool for accessing databases of federal government agencies.
  • Environmental Protection Agency
    The agency's website provides, in addition to other information, a breakdown by business sector of the regulations the agency administers.
  • FDsys
    FDsys provides fully searchable public access to the U.S. Code, Public Laws, Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register, among other Congressional and agency resources.
  • Federal Courts Finder
    Find federal courts of appeal and federal district courts on this interactive map.
  • Federal Judicial Center
    Biographies of  federal judges from 1789 to the present as well as publications, including the Manual for Complex Litigation and the Immigration Law Primer.
  • FedStats
    Statistics from more than 100 federal agencies.
  • FRASER
    Links to historical and current economic and statistical publications, releases, and documents.
  • GovTrack.us
    Follow the latest Congressional legislative activity. Find your Congressional district, search bills and browse by subject area, browse voting records, and view committee assignments and bills by committee.
  • Guide to the House and Senate Members of the Current Congress
    From GPO Access, a guide to current members of Congress. Searchable by district, birth date, zip code and many other variables.
  • Historical Census Browser
    Search state and country topics for individual census years and/or examine state and county topics over time and generate interactive maps from the data you retrieve. Covers census data from 1790 through 1960.
  • Law Library of Congress
    U.S. and international legal resources from the Law Library of Congress.
  • List of Federal Agency Internet Sites
    Louisiana State University Libraries' Federal Agency Directory provides an alphabetical list of all U.S. agencies, searchable by keyword.
  • LLSDC's Legislative Sourcebook
    Federal legislative history resources from the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.
  • LOUIS
    The Library of Unified Information Sources (LOUIS) from Rice University makes available, in searchable form, the following U.S. Government sources (dating back to 2001): Congressional Reports, the Congressional Record, Congressional Hearings, the Federal Register, Presidential Documents, GAO Reports, and Congressional Bills & Resolutions.
  • Market Research Library
    Research reports on markets around the world, from the U.S. Commercial Service. Registration is required to use most features.
  • National Climatic Data Center
    Climate research and meteorological data resource from NOAA.
  • National Criminal Justice Reference Service
    Federally funded clearinghouse offering justice and substance abuse information.
  • Office of the Federal Register
    Access to Federal laws and proposed and final regulations, updated daily.
  • Open CRS Network
    Public interest group provides links to those Congressional Research Reports which have been released to the public.
  • OpenCongress.org
    Information about members of Congress (including voting records, congressional committees, and pending legislation), provided by the public interest group. The Money Trail enables you to trace financial donations to members of Congress.  A mixture of official information and opinion, in the form of blogs and Twitter streams.
  • Regulations.gov
    Access point to proposed and final U.S. government agency rules and decisions.  Allows public comment on proposed rules. 
  • Statistical Abstract of the United States
    "The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published since 1878, is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States."
  • The White House
    Current presidential documents, press releases, executive orders.
  • Thomas
    Locate federal legislative documents: bill texts, committee reports, public laws, link to the Congressional Record.  Most materials are available from 1989 to date. 
  • U.S. Code
    PDF version of the U.S.C. from 1994 to date.
  • U.S. Courts : The Federal Judiciary
    Official site of the federal courts.  Links to all federal courts, court rules and rule amendments, as well as the federal court locator and PACER.
  • U.S. House of Representatives
    Find your Representative, track current House activity, link to the U.S. Code, votes on bills, and committee websites.
  • U.S. House of Representatives Video Feed
    Streaming video feeds of House floor proceedings, back to the beginning of the 111th Congress.
  • U.S. Senate
    Current legislative activity, roll call votes, and treaty status information as well as historical information on the U.S. Senate and links to all Senate committees.
  • USA.gov
    The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal provides links to an A to Z agency list and federal, state, local and tribal governments. 

 

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Find an Attorney

  • Find a Lawyer
    A service of the North Carolina State Bar, this site provides a listing of attorneys certified as specialists, a listing of  licensed attorneys, and a listing compiled by the North Carolina Association of Trial Lawyers.
  • Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory
    Search for attorneys in the U.S. and abroad. 
  • North Carolina Lawyers Referral Service
    This service maintains a listing of attorneys who have agreed to limit the cost of the initial consultation. It does not make referrals to attorneys who will work pro bono.                                                                
  • South Carolina Bar
    The South Carolina Bar Lawyer Referral Service is a public service of the South Carolina Bar offered by telephone and online. It maintains a listing of attorneys who have agreed to limit the cost of the initial consultation.
  • South Carolina Legal Services
    South Carolina Legal Services provides free legal services in a wide variety of civil (non-criminal) legal matters to eligible low income residents of South Carolina.
  • West Legal Directory via Findlaw
    Search for attorneys nationwide 

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International Law

  • Afghanistan Documentation Project
    This project is the product of a partnership between the War Crimes Research Office, the Pence Law Library of the American University Washington College of Law and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Publicly accessible, it allows full searching of documents regarding human rights and humanitarian law violations committed in Afghanistan since 1971.
  • African Human Rights Case Law Analyser
    From the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, established by the Organization of African Unity, this database allows you to view human rights cases filed and decided in various African countries. Provides case summaries, authorities cited, and listings of the sections of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights which were alleged to have been violated.
  • Archive of European Integration
    The Archive of European Integration (AEI) is an electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The AEI collects two types of materials, dating from the 20th and 21st centuries: independently-produced research materials and official European Community/European Union documents.
  • Audiovisual Library of International Law
    This useful, but slow-to-load, United Nations resource comprises historic archives, a lecture series, and a research library of international law sources.
  • BAILII
    The British equivalent of Cornell's LII, this site offers free access to British and Irish case law & legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.
  • Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations
    Search for British and other international legal abbreviations to identify publication titles.
  • Council of Europe Venice Commission
    The Council's CODICES database reports on the case law of constitutional courts in Europe and on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Community.
  • Death Penalty Worldwide Database
    Provides up-to-date analysis on the law and practice of capital punishment for every country in the world that retains it.
  • Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL)
    International law research links from the American Society of International Law.
  • FLARE Index to Treaties
    This site indexes more than 1500 multilateral treaties, beginning in 1856. It allows searching for treaties by keywords, title, and the year and the place the treaty was concluded. Many of the search results link to the web version of the treaty and EISIL and note where the treaty can be found in print.
  • Foreign Information by Country
    The University of Colorado at Boulder has collected a wealth of information on each of the countries of the world.
  • Gender Jurisprudence and International Criminal Law Project
    The centerpiece of this project is the Gender Jurisprudence Collections (GJC), a powerful database containing more than 26,000 documents, including judgments, decisions, and orders issued by international/ized criminal courts and tribunals, and made easily searchable for issues relating to sexual and gender-based violence.
  • Global Courts
    Link to Supreme Court decisions from around the world.  Site was last updated in 2006.
  • Global Database: Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
    This site "provides instant access to official documents about the rights of the internally displaced and the application of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement."
  • Global Legal Information Network
    International legal resources from the Library of Congress. This site is currently unavailable.
  • GlobaLex
    Articles on how to research international, foreign and comparative law topics from NYU's Hauser Global Law School Program.
  • Hague Conference on Private International Law
    Text of the Hague conventions.
  • International Court of Justice
    Includes cases dating back to 1947, two years after the Court was established.
  • Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
    A fully searchable database of the 197,745 criminal trials held at the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court.
  • UK Treaties Online
    Access details of over 14,000 treaties involving the UK.
  • United Nations
    The world body's website is a source of information on international conflicts, as well as a portal into international law. Locate U.N. Charter, resolutions, maps and other documents. 
  • United Nations Treaty Series
    Searchable database of treaties deposited with the UN and its predecessor organization, the League of Nations.
  • WIPO Lex
    "One-stop search facility for national laws and treaties on intellectual property (IP) of WIPO, WTO and UN Members."

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Law Reviews

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Law Schools

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Legal Dictionaries

  • Law Dictionary
    Findlaw's free legal dictionary from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law (1996).
  • Law Dictionary
    Law.com's free legal dictionary based on The People's Law Dictionary by Gerald and Kathleen Hill.

 

 Legal History

 

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Legal News

  • Courthouse News Service
    May require a subscription for some pages.
  • Findlaw Top Legal Headlines
    Top legal news headlines and commentary.
  • Law.com
    News from the American Lawyer Media publications the National Law Journal, American Lawyer, Legal Times, New York Law Journal.  Archived articles require a subscription for full text access.

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Legal Research

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Legal Research Portals

  • Cornell University Law Library Legal Research Engine 
    This portal to the portals allows users to search a variety of legal research guides from one search box, the legal internet from another and the academic blawgosphere from a third.
  • Courtport.com
    Offers access to "court case information, rules and forms, property, recordings, liens, criminal business, licensing/disciplinary, and people records." Unlimited free access is available to anyone with an e-mail address ending in ".edu." 
  • Findlaw
    One of the original legal web sites allows you to research the law, find an expert, browse legal news.
  • HG.org
    A portal for U.S. and International legal resources
  • Legal Information Institute
    Cornell Law School's legal information portal, with extensive state and federal legal resources.
  • LLRX.com
    Law Library Resource Xchange, a collection of legal research guides, tips, product reviews, technology updates.
  • OpenJurist.org
    Search the U.S. Code and more than 600,000 United States Supreme Court and United States Courts of Appeals opinions. United States Reports opinions through 2005 are available, and Federal Reporter 3rd opinions are current as of early 2007. Search by case name, citation or full-text searches.
  • Public Library of Law
    Free access to cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, all 50 states (from 1997-present), plus Federal statutory law, codes from all 50 states, constitutions, court rules, and regulations.
  • Washlaw
    The legal research portal developed by the Washburn University School of Law.
  • Zimmerman's Research Guide
    An online encyclopedia for legal researchers.

 

Libraries

  • College of Charleston Libraries
    From the main page, clicking on Resource Guides will bring you to the librarians’ thoughtful choices as to the best resources for particular topics. If you are a Friend of the Library, you can use the online library databases, which are otherwise password protected, in the library.
  • Daniel Library - The Citadel
    Of the multitude of databases that are displayed here, many are freely available to the public.
  • Law School Library and State Law Library Catalogs
    Connect to all the law school library and state law library catalogs from another excellent site maintained by the folks at Washburn University School of Law.
  • Medical University of South Carolina Library
    The MUSC library offers a wealth of medical material. While much of it is password-protected, many resources are freely available to the public. Go to http://musc.libguides.com/index.php to get plugged into the excellent series of research guides produced by the MUSC librarians.
     

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Litigation Resources

  • BitLaw
    BitLaw: a resource on technology and intellectual property law
  • Class Action Litigation Information
    Privately maintained site may provide useful class action litigation information.
  • Pipl
    Search the "deep web" for anyone in the United States.

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Newspapers

  • Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers
    This resource, from the Library of Congress, allows searching of historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or using the Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690 and the present.

 

Patents

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Reference

  • Dictionary.com
    Search the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. (2000) and Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus.
  • Merriam-Webster Online
    Search the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary or Thesaurus; dictionary has audio pronunciation feature.
  • Zip Codes
    Find a zip code through the U.S. Postal Service web site 

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Scholarly Resources

  • Anglo-American Legal Tradition
    Site makes available 3,000,000 digitized images of documents from the U.K. National archives between the years 1218 and 1650. The documents include a wide range of series from both common law and equity courts and from the exchequer. The documents are relevant primarily to those engaged in legal, governmental, economic, religious, social, and local history.
  • Avalon Project
    From the Code of Hammurabi to the report of the 9/11 commission, this site, the creation of Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Library, provides access to legal, historical, political and diplomatic documents from 4000 BCE to the 21st century.  Hotlinks to supporting documents and definitions enhance the collection's usefulness.
  • ELS Bibliography
    Compiled and maintained by Cornell and UCLA law librarians, this bibliography of recent empirical legal research articles can be searched by author, title and subject.
  • English Reports, 1220 to 1873
    Free access to the English Reports from 1220-1873, available from the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). The English Reports database contains 124,882 cases. Full text searching is available.
  • Founders' Constitution
    Provides the historical documents which informed the drafting and administration of the U.S. Constitution from the early 17th century to the 1830's. 
  • Leon E. Bloch Law Library Sir Edward Coke Collection
    Read and search digitized versions of the Institutes or the Reports of the famed 18th century British jurist.  From the University of Missouri Digital Library.
  • NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository
    The NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository provides free access to working papers, reports, lecture series, workshop presentations, and other scholarship created by faculty at NELLCO member schools.
  • Project Gutenberg
    Over 100,000 out-of-copyright titles from the first producer of free e-books.  Primarily literary titles, with a smattering of scientific works.
  • Social Science Research Network
    Search scholarly legal articles in progress or already published, many downloadable for free.

 

 

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Search Engines

  • Ask.com
    Competent search engine has lost its annoying butler.
  • Ask Answers
    That improbable thing, a search engine mediated by live humans, promises to give you expert answers to your questions.
  • DRAGNET
    Search engine developed by librarians at New York Law School searches free legal resource databases selected by the librarians.
  • Google
    The search engine that's also a verb; try the advanced search page for more powerful searching.
  • Google Scholar
    Search Legal Opinions and Journals for free resources without the editorial enhancements of Wexis, but with a better search engine. 
  • IceRocket
    Social networking search engine.

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South Carolina Legal Research

 

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Specialty Practice Topics

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State Legal Research

  • Court Records Free Reference and Directory
    Contains useful information about every state and county court in the United States, and links to online court record search services.
  • New York Codes, Rules & Regulations
    The NYCRR primarily contains state agency rules and regulations adopted under the State Administrative Procedure Act (SAPA). The 22 Titles include one for each state department, one for miscellaneous agencies and one for the Judiciary.
  • Public.resource.org
    This public interest site publishes state and municipal public safety codes from every state.
  • Public Access to Court Records State Court Links
    From the National Center for State Courts, links to  court docket sheet databases in most of the states.  Annotations about each database allow you to preview  coverage and any special features, such as case notification services.

  • State Agency Databases
    This resource contains links to useful state agency databases for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Compiled by volunteers from the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) of the American Library Association.

  • State Legislative History Research Guides On the Web
    Compiled by Jennifer Bryan Moore of the Indiana University School of Law Library - Bloomington, this guide provides links to legislative history research guides for all 50 states. 

Statistics

  • 2010 Census
    The 2010 federal count of the United States population offers statistics and interactive tools which allow relational searches.
  • 2012 Statistical Abstract 
  • UnctadStat
    Statistical data on worldwide trade from the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development.

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United States Military Law 

  • Military Legal Resources
    Published by the U.S. Library of Congress, provides digital access to the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School Library's holdings

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United States Supreme Court

 

 

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