Cleveland-Marshall College of Law

Law Library 101:  Using Your Law Library to be a Successful Law Student

Introduction:What is a Law Library?

A law library differs from most libraries because it contains the actual tools necessary for practicing law, ie. the law itself. Part of the actual practice of law, legal research, takes place in the library, which may not be true for other professions.

Types of Law Libraries

Academic Law Libraries - Based in law schools, students and professors are the academic law libraries' primary patrons.  Law school libraries may be open to practicing attorneys and the general public. As a public university and a government depository, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library is open to the public.

The academic library builds collections around the teaching and research interests of the faculty. The collection also reflects the academic concentrations of the school. Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library, for example, has collection strengths in Constitutional Law, Islamic Law, Employment and Labor Law, Ohio Law, Health Law and Urban Law.

Membership law libraries (for example the Cleveland Law Library Association), court law libraries, (ie. Ohio Supreme Court Library) and private law libraries owned by law firms and corporate legal departments (for example,  Calfee, Halter and Griswold ) serve the needs of the practicing legal community.  Public libraries (ex. Cleveland Public Library) may have legal materials useful for practioners and the public alike.

What Your Law School Library Can Offer You

Beyond print and electronic databases for legal research, the Cleveland Marshall College of Law Library also offers:

The law library uses the Library of Congress  classification system. See Law Library Call Numbers Resource Guide.

Types of Legal Materials

When starting legal research, it is helpful to ask yourself:

Do I want to start by looking at primary or secondary resources?
Does my research pertain to a particular  jurisdiction?
Would it be more efficient to start with print or electronic resources?
Is the source official or unofficial?
Is there a cost for using the database?

Primary or Secondary:

Primary law ( "the law itself") is the text of the law created by authoritative bodies. Primary law consists of constitutions, statutes, court cases, administrative regulations and administrative decisions. Secondary sources, such as law review articles and legal encyclopedias, comment upon, analyze or explain primary law. Often it is helpful to start your research with secondary sources, because they indicate which primary sources may apply and discuss the law in a particular area.

Resources Pertaining to a Specific Jurisdiction:

It is essential to identify whether the legal issue at hand involves federal law, state law, municipal law, the law of a foreign county or of an international organization. See the CALI lesson: Decision Point: State or Federal? A secondary legal resource may attempt to cover all U.S. jurisdictions, or only one. Primary resources typically cover one jurisdiction.

Sometimes it is not clear whether to apply the law of one particular jurisdiction or another. The branch of law dealing with what jurisdiction's laws to apply is known as "conflict of laws".

Print or Electronic:

Electronic sources may contain a table of contents, but usually not an index.

Print better when- Electronic better when-
Common or ambiguous terms, unfamiliar with terms of art A unique or unusual search term
------- The most recent information needed
Electronic searching is costly Free electronic database OR not billed to client
The research involves concepts or theories After preliminary research, search statement combines facts and concepts
Need to find broader information & analogies ---------

See "Electronic Resources or Print Resources: Some Observations on Where to Search", Bintliff, Barbara, 14 Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing 1, Fall 2005.

Official v. Unofficial, Authenticated v. Unauthenticated

The "official version" of a statute or court opinion means it is government mandated or approved by statute or rule. If there is a discrepancy between an unofficial and the official version, the official version prevails. For example, the online version  of Ohio Session laws is not official, while the print  Laws of Ohio  is official.

Authenticated means the government verified the document as complete and unaltered. Authentication of an electronic resource may involve digital signatures, digital watermarks or other methods. While some state primary resources on the web are official, none are authenticated. See  Matthews & Baish, State-by-State Authentication of Online Legal Resources, American Association of Law Libraries , 2007.

Free v. Fee:

When using any of the resources in the law library for educational use, you will not be charged. At a law firm, electronic searches on Lexis or Westlaw may be paid for on a per search basis (transactional) or an hourly basis. Even if the database is within the law firm's "all you can eat" plan, some firms bill the searches to clients. Start with print resources, free web resources or databases such as BNA or CCH which are usually not billed to clients. See  Efficient and Cost Effective Legal Research.

Electronic Resources

Besides  LexisNexis and Westlaw, the law library subscribes to BNA, CCH and others. For a list, see the  Electronic Resources  page. Even more databases are available via  University Library's web page  or OhioLINK.

Secondary Sources

Encyclopedias provide explanations of legal issues, arranged alphabetically by topic. Examples:  American Jurisprudence 2d ( Am Jur) and Corpus Juris Secundum  (CJS) (state and federal law); Ohio Jurisprudence 3d (O Jur) (Ohio law).

Digests contain brief summaries of the case rulings arranged in a topical order, and subject indexes to navigate the arrangement. An example is West's Ohio Digest. For information on how to use digests, see Ohio Legal Research Guide - Secondary Sources

Law Reviews are published by law schools, and are run and edited by law students. They feature scholarly articles on various legal topics. Cleveland-Marshall publishes the  Cleveland State Law Review  and the Journal of Law and Health. For more information see Resource Guide: Finding Law Journal Articles.

ALR ( American Law Reports ) contain: (1) Case reports explaining a particular case and (2) Articles on discrete subjects, which provide primary authority.

Treatises, Hornbooks and Nutshells and Study Aids: Treatises present the law in a given field and can be single volume works or multi-volume sets, for example, American Law of Torts. Hornbooks are one volume treatises. Nutshells offer more concise treatment of legal subjects. For more information on study aids, see  Preparing for Law School Exams.

Restatements set out the common-law rules or majority consensus in United States jurisdictions on a subject. Unlike most secondary sources, Restatements are often cited in legal opinions. They are published by the  American Law Institute.

Where and How to Find Court Cases

Sources for finding cases
Find a case by .....citation, party name, subject matter
Court Level or Hierarchy
Precedential Value

What is a "case"?

A case is a written opinion by a judge, explaining his/her decision in a lawsuit. The lawsuit is called a "case" and the written opinion is often called a "case" too. In this article, when we are talking about a "case", we will be talking about written opinions.

Where can I find cases?

Cases can be found in print "reporters", for example, Northeastern Reporter, Federal Reporter  or Federal Rules Decisions . See How to Read a Legal Citation  for a list of reporters. Decisions from these reporters may appear in electronic services such as LexisNexis, LexisNexis Academic , Westlaw, Casemaker (available via OSBA membership; membership is free to law students.) and  Fastcase (Available via membership in the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.) Electronic services may also contain "unreported" or "unpublished" cases, which do not appear in print reporters. For a discussion of the meaning of "reported" and "unreported" decisions in both Ohio and federal courts, see   Ohio Legal Research Guide - Ohio Courts. Sometimes cases, particularly more recent cases, may be found for free on the web. See: Case Law - Legal Research Workstation .

How do I find cases using a case citation?

If you have a case citation, such as Shaffer v. Frontrunner, Inc., 57 Ohio App. 3d 18 (1990), you will find the case at the print Volume 57 of the Ohio Appellate Reports, third series, at page 18. Electronic databases typically provide a "search by citation" box. See: How to Find an Ohio Case in the Law Library ; How to Read a Legal Citation.

Finding a Case with the Party Name(s):

If the party names are common, such as "State v. Jones", you will need more information to find the case, such as the jurisdiction, date range, and/or subject matter of the case.

-Lexis,  LexisNexisNexis Academic  and Westlaw have search boxes to search by party name.
-Use the Table of Cases volume in a West's Digest set, eg. West’s Ohio Digest , West's Federal Practice Digest.
-A legal encyclopedia may contain a table of cases, for example  Ohio Jurisprudence 3d   (selective).

How to Find a Case on a Particular Subject or Issue:

(1) Use secondary sources such as: Digests , Encyclopedias,  ALR, Treatises/practice books , Citators, etc.

(2) Annotated statutes or administrative codes list summaries of cases pertaining to each statute or rule.

(3) Full text keyword search of primary source databases. Try Lexis, LexisNexis Academic or Westlaw, etc.

Determining Court Level:

Determining the court level can: (1) Help locate a case, as case reporters are generally organized by court level; (2) Determine the likelihood that a written opinion exists. State trial court lawsuits are often decided without a written opinion, and (3) Determine the precedential value of the case.

The first level is the trial court level. (federal District Courts; Common Pleas  or Municipal Court, in Ohio). The losing party might appeal to an appellate court, such as the  Court of Appeals in Ohio, or the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and eventually to the court of last resort, such as the Ohio Supreme Court , or the United States Supreme Court . See Structure of the Ohio Judicial System Chart ; Structure of the U.S. Courts. For the court structure in other states, see  BNA's Directory of State and Federal Courts.

Determining Precedential Value:

A case has "precedential value" if a court must follow that case in subsequent decisions. A case has "persuasive value" if a court can choose to follow the decision in that case, but is not required to do so. Generally, cases in the same jurisdiction have precedential value, and must be followed unless a subsequent case is distinguishable on its facts or there are good reasons to overturn the prior legal reasoning. (but see reported vs. unreported cases)

The court level or hierarchy indicates whether the decisions of a court are binding upon another court. For example, a United States Supreme Court case is binding precedent in all federal and state courts. A federal appellate court decision has precedential weight in subsequent cases in that appellate circuit court and all the district courts in that circuit. For example, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision would have precedential weight in federal district courts in Ohio ,Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. See  Map of the Federal Appellate and District Courts. A Sixth Circuit case would merely have persuasive value in a California district court, or in the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Statutes

Statutes are bills that have been passed by legislative bodies and approved by the executive (or if vetoed, then overridden by the legislature).  Statutes may address issues never considered by the courts or may modify or overturn court rulings. Court cases often interpret statutory language. 

"Codes" are subject-arranged compilations of statutes, for example,  Baldwin's Ohio Revised Code Annotated  and Page's Ohio Revised Code Annotated . The federal government publishes the official United States Code (USC) , but since updates are slow, researchers will use either  United States Code Service (USCS)(Lexis) or United States Code Annotated (USCA)(Westlaw).  When a code is "annotated' it contains brief summaries of cases that interpret the statutes as well as references to secondary resources.  LexisNexis, LexisNexisNexis Academic  and Westlaw contain federal and state annotated codes.

Unannotated codes can be found in other commercial databases such as  Casemaker, or on the Internet. See Legal Research Workstation: Statutes, Legislation and Codes.

Constitutions

A constitution is the basic document of organizational structure and principles by which a political body governs itself. Each state's code usually contains a copy of its constitution. The federal codes discussed above contain a copy of the U.S. Constitution. The United States Constitution and state constitutions can be located on the web via  American Law Sources Online.

Administrative Law

Administrative law consists of (1) rules and regulations passed by executive agencies and (2) administrative decisions by agency adjudicatory bodies. Agencies derive their authority from the legislature. State administrative regulations are often published in a subject arranged compilation similar to the state code, for example, the  Ohio Administrative Code. The Code of Federal Regulations  is the official codification of federal regulations. 

The agency decisions may or may not set precedent, and many times may be appealed in the court system. Administrative agency regulations and decisions can be located on the web via  American Law Sources Online  and on Lexis, LexisNexis Academic and Westlaw. For more information, see  Administrative Law Resource Guide; Ohio Legal Research Guide: Administrative Regulations ; Ohio Legal Research Guide: Administrative Decisions.

Updates/Shepardizing

Updates

When using print materials, be sure to check pocket parts or other updates. Electronic services improve on the timing of updates, but may not be up to the minute. To check for changes occurring after a pocket part was published, or after the last time a database was updated:

Statutes - Look in state Session Laws or Federal  Public Laws.
Regulations - Federal (CFR)- List of Sections Affected, Federal Register; Ohio Administrative Code- Ohio Monthly Record, KFO35.A23 O35, Register of Ohio.

Citators may pick up recent changes to statutes and regulations. Cases can be updated using citators.

Citators: "Shepardizing"

To shepardize a case (or statute, regulation, etc.) means to generate a list of subsequent cases, articles, etc. that discuss the case. Citation services include Shepard's on  Lexis and Key Cite on Westlaw. The term "shepardize" evolves from the original publisher of Shepard's Citations, which for many years was the only provider of this type of service. 

Shepardizing serves two purposes: (1) to determine the case or statute's current validity and (2) to find more similar cases. Most of the time Shepards or Keycite will indicate whether a case is "still good law". Occasionally, it is possible the case is no longer good law, but no subsequent case ever cited that case as overruled. Looking at the Table of Authorities in Lexis will help determine whether the underpinning cases cited in a decision have been overturned.  

 JRN , LP August 2004, Revised SA, July 2008
links checked 8/10/2009 aeb

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