In certain areas of law, it benefits states to have similar legislative approaches. Sometimes states pass virtually identical acts, known as uniform laws, to reduce the confusion caused by conflicting state statutes. But how do they decide what makes up these uniform laws, and how can we research them? The Uniform Law Commission (ULC) is …
One of my longstanding favorite statutory research features offered by Lexis+ is the Subsection Report. Let’s explore how this tool works below! Comprehensive Report When you Shepardize a statute, you can view a comprehensive report of all the citing references for the statute by clicking the Shepard’s symbol or “Shepardize Document”. However, when you are …
Nothing helps fight the anxiety of a job interview like preparation. If you are interviewing for a job at a law firm, you have a powerful ally on your side: legal analytics. You can use analytics to find helpful statistics on law firms or individual attorneys that can: (1) help you decide if that firm …
As of early January, academic Westlaw Edge accounts transitioned to Westlaw Precision. This update brings some new research features as well as a new homepage layout: This post will cover a few easy ways to customize your Westlaw homepage to better suit your needs and help you get into your most-used resources faster. Changing the …
One of the more difficult parts of legal research can be navigating the complicated structure of the government, especially if you are doing research involving administrative agencies. Government manuals are underutilized resources that provide nuts-and-bolts details like organizational charts, staffing information, department histories, and more. They can save you a lot of time by compiling …
At UNC, we have access to a wealth of resources on legal research and pedagogy, both in print and through our many digital collections. However, there are books that we find ourselves reaching for again and again, either as we answer reference questions or prepare for instruction. When it comes to these titles, our law …
If you’ve taken a legal research class, you have probably heard a professor discuss the importance of state legal encyclopedias as a research tool. Why? They include jurisdiction-specific coverage of a wide range of legal topics. The information contained in an encyclopedia may be brief, but it will point you to the primary law on …
Trying to read an article or blawg post and having trouble focusing on the text? Or want a clean copy of what you’re reading without intrusive ads or banners? Or want to translate a page to English or see who else is talking about an image you found? Here are a few browser features that …
If you’re looking to locate a primary law source — statutes, regulations, court records, etc. — in the library, you may wind up searching in the UNC libraries catalog. If you’ve done this in the past, you know it can be tricky to find the right resource. We’ve put together an instructional video with a …
As the Biden administration begins—and the news fills with a flurry of presidential activities—now is a great time to brush-up on authoritative sources for presidential documents and materials. Presidential materials include executive orders, proclamations, memorandum, directives, signing statements, and assorted other documents like speeches and announcements. There are four authoritative government resources publishing these documents: …
