Customer Reviews

Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
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I am a legal assistant and I use this book constantly! It gives you great strategies to work more efficiently while getting better results. I had no idea how many legal resources there are online! This book tells you which sites are the most reliable and easy to use. It also demystifies annotated legal codes, case digests, state reports and many other research tools. But most importantly it is extremeley well organized and easy to use. I wish that I had discovered this book when I was a student!

If you have a modicum of introduction to the law, and need a guidebook on "how to" go about researching a legal question, this book is one of the best available. It does assume that you have some working knowledge of how law works, but is an especially good book for either first year law students or paralegal students beyond their introductory courses. Well worth having on your shelf.

Now in its tenth edition, Legal Research: How To Find & Understand The Law by attorneys Stephen Elias and Susan Levinkind is a simple, direct, straightforward, "user friendly" guide to the extremely complicated and tricky topic of doing legal research. Individual chapters address how to properly frame questions in legal categories and efficiently look up relevant laws and case history. Legal Research is emphatically not a substitute for a consultation with an attorney; however, a close reading followed by judicious use of its fact-finding methods is a superbly effective way for non-specialist general readers to prepare themselves before sitting down with a billed-by-the-hour consultation with a licensed attorney or paralegal researcher!

I find this book to be a great resource for non-lawyers. As adjunct faculty at a community college, I use it to supplement the course text for my Legal Research & Writing Course for Paralegals. Well worth the purchase, and a great value!

Legal information can seem confusing to the common person which is why this book was written. You need to understand how to find laws, regulations and court cases (if you are representing yourself in court). This is great even if you d not go to court because it makes you a smarter more diverse individual.

This book gives you a straight forward resource on how to find the laws and regulations, how to read the citations, and how to use the law library. It is good for lawyers, judges, paralegals or the layman. It is packed with tons of useful information.

I recommend it to everyone who has to decide if things are legal or not.

Footnote: Nolo press is the best company that produces law books for the common person. They are always easy to read and pact with good advice.


Enjoy

This is an excellent and necessary legal research book for all paralegals,law students and legal researchers.
The hypotheticals and research questions with detailed answers alone make it a must have volume. The authors skillfully guide the student through the legal research process with these problems and answers.This is the most valuable legal research book in my personal library. Highly recommended.

This is the greatest book I've read on legal research. Have used some paralegal texts, and this is by far the most useful and readable. It's been (is being) a tremendous help to a paralegal course I'm taking, and hopefully for an intended JD journey.

I selected this book because I have had several legal questions that I have not found a good way to research. I do a lot of reading of educational research but have discovered that the legal world resides in an entirely different Universe called Law Libraries and is written in words that arenotenglish.

This book is organized in a user friendly manner and begins at the bottom level by explaining what laws are and how they are made, and the difference between state and federal laws and cases. Understanding what court regulates an issue is a huge part of beginning research. This was an interesting approach and it was explained concisely. I've seen entire books on the judicial branch of our government, from teaching Civics, and this narrowed it down very quickly.

Another interesting chapter is on identifying your legal issue. It asks you to form your question and clarify what area you are working in - civil or criminal, state or federal. This section helps you narrow down your issue before you try to research it. This was interesting because it is something asked of us in many areas, especially educational. One of the biggest problems students have when doing research is identifying what it is they want to find out. It seems like this is a universal approach in research.

The glossary at the end is a very handy section and is also written in simple and clear language.

One of the biggest achievements of this book is the way it is put in plain English. Being user friendly makes it easy to follow and implement the advice, making it much more likely that the book will actually be used, instead of just being bought as a token attempt before going to see an attorney. I would always prefer to do the research myself than hire a law firm to do it for me.

That's what this book is, a research digest. It breaks the whole process of legal research down into bite size pieces. This means it is not quite the arduous it used to be. The book is a useful guide when trying to figure out exactly where to obtain legal information. The authors have thoroughly explained how to phrase questions so that the information is easily accessible. This simple tool can save hours of trying to figure out the legal jargon and never getting your questions answered. It is definitely a must for the personal library.

Don't know a lawyer from a process server? or the difference between civil and criminal law? This book's for you! It covers all the basics, AND lets you in on how to find the answers and information you need, easily. Even if you are well represented (have a lawyer you trust), this book makes you far more able to understand legalese and how the Law works. You'll be surprised and pleased to be able to hold up your end of the conversation the next time you're surrounded by legal types!