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Free & Low-Cost Legal Research

Domestic Law Resources

The following websites are trusted sources of free legal information relating to United States law. If not outright official government sources, most are produced by companies with the purpose of freely disseminating legal information for the public good or originated as projects by law schools for that very same goal. While these contain many primary law materials (codes, case law, etc.), their explanatory materials (also known as secondary materials) are useful for those unfamiliar with certain legal concepts or areas of laws. These explanatory materials, being original content, are written and edited by attorneys, law professors, or other legal professionals, which lends to their credibility. These websites feature heavily on this guide, but with more directed links as their coverage is vast. The below links will take you to the main page, so you can explore or navigate as needed.

A reliable host of many primary sources of law as well as plenty of original content including the free useful Wex, a free legal dictionary and encyclopedia. 

  • Justia by the Justia Company

This site was created and developed to advance the availability of legal resources for society's benefit. A large collection of free legal resources including case law, codes, summaries of opinions, and legal guides for different areas of practice. Also includes lawyer directory.

Hub of legal content maintained for the purpose of making the law accessible and understandable for everyone. In addition to primary law and legal education guides, contains the interactive components of a form database and a lawyer directory service.

Features many different legal publications, topic guides, industry analysis, and various practice tools. Furthermore, the Legal Dictionary allows you to browse terms, or search for terms or by definition. 

  • GovInfo by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO)

Provides free public access to official publications from all branches of the Federal government. Features standard search, advanced search, and search by citation as well as browsing by alphabet, category, date, committee, and author.

Official website for U.S. federal legislative information including legislation, the Congressional Record, committees, and members.

A project by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU to cover state constitutional issues in high courts for all 50 states. Contains resources about each state, including judicial makeup and constitutions, as well as the case database which contains opinions and briefs for significant past and pending cases. The site also has original content in the form of news, commentary, and analysis. 

Various research guides focusing on statutory law and administrative law research created by law librarians.

The LLC contains the world's largest collection of law books and legal resources from all over the world. Provides U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law sources. Maintains online resources such as substantive and research guides.

The official U.S. repository for important governmental documents.