KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

As part of our National Library Week celebration, we would like to refresh your memory about the many custom databases we provide to support your research.  Use of all of these is free to anyone who visits either of our branches.  If you choose to print your results, the charge is 15 cents per page.

Westlaw — our custom subscription includes full-text access to all State appellate-level decisions, cases from all Federal district and circuit courts, all cases from the US Supreme Court, and the legislative and administrative codes from all fifty states.  It also includes full-text access to our State’s legal encyclopedia Washington Practice, broad-based legal encyclopedias such as American Jurisprudence 2d, AmJur Proof of Facts and AmJur Trials, Washington jury verdicts and West’s citator service Keycite.

Lexis — our custom subscription focuses on Washington State and Washington Federal resources including all decisions from our State Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court, cases originating in the Federal district courts in Washington and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Annotated Revised Code of Washington, and all three of our State’s law school publications, Washington Law Review, Seattle University Law Review, and Gonzaga Law Review.  It also includes access to Lexis’ citator service, Shepards.

Fastcase – the newest addition to our database lineup includes cases and statutes from all 50 states, federal statutes and cases, links to federal and state regulatory materials and specialty databases such as IRS Revenue Rulings,  Board of Immigration Appeals, United States Tax Court and U.S. Court of Federal Claims.  It also includes access to FastCase’s Authority Check system to help you quickly locate additional decisions related to your research.

SupportCalc — our subscription to this specialized software enables you to fill out, save and print child support and support-related documents for Washington State without having to manually calculate rates and figures.

HeinOnline — our subscription to this valuable resource provides access to full-text articles from hundreds of the nation’s leading law reviews and bar journals, the Code of Federal Regulations and United States Code, a variety of Congressional documents including the Congressional Record and the Congressional Record Daily, and legal classics such as Blackstone’s Commentaries.

The Intellectual Property Colloquium is an online audio program that offers free podcasts on intellectual property topics. According to the Colloquium website (and the WSBA website), the programs have been approved for CLE credit in Washington.  The current program from March 2011, “The Federal Trade Commission,” features a discussion of a recent FTC report on patent system reform.  Archived programs include  “More Than a Game” (from November 2010),  featuring the chief legal officers of three of the major video game studios, and “Privacy in a Networked World” (from December 2008).  The podcasts are hosted by Professor Doug Lichtman of the UCLA School of Law.

When ESHB 1787 was signed into law by Governor Gary Locke in May 2003, Washington State officially joined the ranks of states participating in a nation-wide effort to make it easier for citizens across the country to find and use the valuable public resources in their local areas. Known as WIN 2-1-1, the Washington Information Network serves as a both a telephone and Internet portal which residents can use to find information about a variety of local community resources. The database behind WIN 2-1-1 contains records detailing over 16,000 local services across the state, from legal aid offices to health care clinics and adult literacy programs. Citizens can use the Internet portal from home to search for services by keyword or topic. They can also dial 2-1-1 from anywhere in Washington State to speak directly with an Information and Referral Specialist. For more information about current WIN 2-1-1 activities, its funding challenges and its service statistics, see the WIN 2-1-1 Board’s latest quarter report.

Ask someone to list the resources they look to when doing legal research and they’re likely to mention specialized databases like Westlaw, Lexis or FastCase, and government or non-profit-sponsored web sites like the Washington State Court web site, GPO Access, the Municipal Research Services web site and the Northwest Justice Project’s WashingtonLawHelp site.  A resource that is often missing from the list but can be extremely valuable is newspapers.

A great deal of law-related information appears in newspaper articles.  If you are trying to research trial-level matters, a newspaper article may be the best place to start.  Newspaper databases also provide a depth of historical information that is not always available from specialty databases, which tend to focus on recent material only.

Fortunately, newspaper databases are readily available.  For our State, one of the best places to begin your newspaper research is at the Washington State Library’s Newspaper site.   The State Library provides access to newspaper databases in paper, microfilm and digital formats.  This site also provides handy links to the individual web sites maintained by Washington newspapers themselves.   If you are eligible for a State Library card, you also have access to an excellent newspaper and journal database called ProQuest.  The next time you need to do legal research, add newspapers to the list of resources you should consider using.

If you’d like to start following Washington State law-related blogs or would like to add to the list you already read, we suggest you take a look at the directory of Washington State law-related blogs published by Mary Whisner, Reference Librarian at the Gallagher Law Library at the University of  Washington School of Law.  Mary’s directory is an easy-to-read list that arranges Washington State law-related blogs into 35 topical categories.  It includes everything from Animal Law to Gun Law, Mining Law and Women’s Rights.  If you follow the first topical link called Guide: Blogs and RSS Feeds, you’ll also find a general directory of legal blogs, information about setting up your own blog and links to guides discussing legal issues surrounding the publication of blogs.  Also, if you publish a blog that focuses on Washington State legal issues or news and would like Mary to consider adding it to her directory, please contact her.

Your public library, e.g. Seattle Public Library or the King County Library System, can be a resource for legal research, particularly in law reviews and other legal periodicals.  (We aren’t passing the buck; we can help you find that information.) If you have a library card, you can do your research remotely; you don’t have to go to the library. 

For example, both SPL and KCLS have LegalTrac, an index that enables you to search for articles from law reviews and other legal literature.  Some articles are provided in full text, while for other articles, only a citation and/or abstract is provided. If full text is not available in LegalTrac, then you will get a link to sources for the full text if  it is in another database at the library.

You can also find legal publications for browsing or for retrieving an article you’re looking for.  You may be surprised at what is available — for example, many of the ABA journals and periodicals, three BNA Tax Management publications, and the Washington Law Review are available at both SPL and KCLS.  The offerings tend to be recent – maybe the last 5 or ten years.  Here is a list of full-text periodicals (not just law) available online through the King County Library System databases.  Here is a similar list for the Seattle Public Library.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added FastCase to the list of legal research databases now available in both our Seattle and Kent branches.  Our subscription includes cases and statutes from all 50 states, federal statutes and cases, links to federal and state regulatory materials and specialty databases such as IRS Revenue Rulings,  Board of Immigration Appeals, United States Tax Court and U.S. Court of Federal Claims.  It also includes access to FastCase’s Authority Check system to help you quickly locate additional decisions related to your research.

The King County Law Library has both Lexis and Westlaw available for free use by its patrons.  The two products do not necessarily use the same search syntax.  That means that entering the same search terms in a Boolean search in Westlaw may not get you the same universe of results (or any results, for that matter), if you do the same search on Lexis, and vice-versa.  The Cleveland-Marshall School of Law library has compiled a comparison chart of the two systems.   The chart compares not only the search syntax of the two systems, but also their two citators:  KeyCite for Westlaw and Shepard’s for Lexis.   (Be aware that the King County Law Library subscriptions may not have all of the content referred to in the material from the Cleveland-Marshall School of Law.)

The King County Bar Association and the King County Bar Foundation are sponsoring a free debt education workshop from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm  on Monday, Dec. 13 at the Douglas Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library.  Topics for discussion will include assessing your debt situation, dealing with debt collectors, how to respond to a debt collection law suit and filing for bankruptcy.  You need to R.S.V.P. to the KCBA at (206) 267-7095.

KCLL has also written a debt collection law suit research guide that identifies the major resources we recommend you review for research in this topic.

King County District Court is now making court records filed after January 1, 2005 available online through their DCoR Online service.  The Court charges 25 cents per page to view or print records via the web or you can go into one of the court’s locations to view them for free.  To  use the service via the web, you will need to set up an account with a valid email address.  For more information, see the District Court’s DCoR FAQ document.