Legal Research

Search and Compare Pending State Legislation with BillFinder

In her Wisconsin Law Journal blog, Bev Butula discusses a useful service called BillFinder which "helps you find any bill eligible for consideration in the current calendar year using either keywords and phrases or bill numbers."

As Bev notes, BillFinder is particularly useful when looking for similar legislation being considered by more than one state. For example, I did a search for bills containing email and public record to see if there was any pending state legislation relating to government email as public record. As you can see by my search below, I did find a number of state bills.

For each bill, BillFinder provides the bill number, a summary, and bill tracking (see "Details" button). For some states, the text of the bill is also provided.

Bev also notes that "the search tool allows for Boolean operators, phrase searching, wildcard, and proximity options. These features help an individual locate legislation when a state's website lacks powerful search functionality. If you only need to search a select group of states, a checkbox window allows you to choose particular states."

BillFinder, which is free, is a service of StateScape, a fee-based service.

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).