Our need is to link to free resources on the web. We do not use West Law or Lexis, because
most people do not have access to these sources. Our most useful sources are Find Law and other search engines
(Google, Excite, Yahoo, etc.). This
document outlines how to find references in both Find Law and a search
engine. Our goal is to link all
footnotes to active web documentation.
This makes our law journal unique, because our readers can have access
to all references immediately.
Finding proper links for the footnotes is of the utmost
importance. Thankfully, searches for
this documentation are highly available and quick to find. Finding proper links should take you no more
than 10 minutes. Our goal again is to
find links for all footnotes, however we do understand there will be a
exceptions.
The following sections will lead you through the basics of finding a
reference. If you have any questions
please contact us to ensure proper referencing and quick turn-around.
Cases
and Statutes – Find Law
Find Law will allow you to find many federal and state resources that
are on West Law and Lexis. Some circuit
and state court websites are more helpful than others – but give everything a try
and more frequently than not, you will be able to find a good link.
- Go to the
Find Law website: http://www.findlaw.com
- Click on the Laws:
Cases & Codes
- Once in the
Laws: Cases& Codes site, choose the area you are searching – Federal
Laws or State Laws – and then the section fits your criteria:
- Codes,
Statutes and Regulations
- Case Law
- From here you
can narrow your search even more by selecting the link that best suites
your citing needs. See where your
search takes you – and hopefully you will end up with a website displaying
the source cited in the footnote.
- If you find a
URL address to fit the footnote source, copy and paste it into a word
document. Be sure to make note of
the source it links to – many times a footnote will contain more than one
source.
Articles
- Internet Resources
The Google search engine (http://www.google.com
or http://www.yahoo.com ) will lead you to
the article in the footnote oftentimes.
Try a usual keyword search for the article title. If you strike out, search by the author’s
name, the publication title (NY Times, etc.), or the subject.
- Go to Google
or Yahoo
- Like any
other search, type in the article name from the footnote and hit the
search button. A search by author
or publication may also be useful.
- Check out the
search results to see if anything matches the source you are looking for…
if so, paste the URL address into a word document along with the source it
will be linked to.
- If Google or
Yahoo leaves you empty-handed, attempt another engine, but do not go crazy
here. There is a point at which it
will become clear that the source is not in cyberworld… in that case, you
are done. Move on!
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