California Labor and Employment Law

Why Legal Blogs Should Be Your First Stop

Legal blogs, or “blawgs” as they are sometimes called, can be a powerful legal research tool for those of you who haven’t gone to law school. Many blawgs make a special effort to reach out to non-lawyers by talking in a language “normal” people can understand. Heaven knows, many lawyers are far from normal. These blawgs also try to discuss topics of everyday concern, as opposed to the courts’ latest subtle twist on the interpretation of an obscure clause, which is exactly the kind of stuff that excites most lawyers . . . including, yes, yours truly.

If you are fortunate enough to have access to a computer and the internet (don’t forget to (more…)

Popularity: 17% [?]

Free Access to Federal Cases

Want to retrieve the full-text of US Supreme Court and Circuit Court of Appeal cases … for free? Now you can. Services like Westlaw and Lexis charge a lot for this service. But a new service called www.AltLaw.org puts these cases out there where they belong, in the public domain. The service is still in beta (i.e., the bugs are still being worked out), and I wouldn’t recommend you rely on it just yet for your mission-critical law briefs. It’s still slow and could be more user-friendly. But did I mention, it’s free? Westlaw and Lexis, take that! Thanks go to the folks at www.inter-alia.net for the tip.

Popularity: 11% [?]