Legal Research

Answer: City and county attorneys and other government employees, solo and small law firm attorneys who assist families with limited income, pro se (self-represented) litigants, especially those with family law and small claims and traffic court questions, middle and high school students, college, law school, and paralegal students, tax professionals, and more all use the public (county) law library.

Fact: Some of our most appreciative groups of county law library patrons include new attorneys who have not been able to find work and part-time attorneys who have family obligations or health limitations that don?t allow for full-time employment outside the home.

Fact: On any given day, county law libraries provide a wide variety of services not available elsewhere, due to the specialized nature of the business.

Here are some of the law library services used on any given day. This list is just for my law library and does not include any of the other Oregon county law libraries that may have additional databases and services, though it is probably representative of many of those other law libraries:

1) Conference Room: arbitration and depositions (including conference calls with local attorneys connecting with out of town, out of state attorneys)
2) Conference Room: client meetings
3) Notary services
4) Difficult, complex legal research questions that can take hours or days to research thoroughly
5) Interlibrary loan requests: for books, articles, and other materials not online or not free online
6) Legislative history research (most not online)
7) Westlaw/Shepards/PACER
8) Other online/Internet services: research databases, social networking, & conferencing software
9) Specialized legal treatises (print)
10) Federal research (print) (USCA, CFR, FR) research
11) Research in legal practice materials (OSB, OLI, OCDLA, etc.)
12) Acquire or research in current or superseded CLE course materials
13) Legal newsletters (many not online except to subscribers or bar members): locate current or back issues
14) Research advice, research tips, document tracking, etc.
15) Legal materials purchasing advice (online and print)
16) Legal materials purchase requests (CLEs, monographs, loose-leafs, special topics)
17) Family law questions/packets: divorce, custody, termination of parental rights, etc.
18) Leaving kids home alone questions (lots!)
19) Juvenile law questions: schools, dependency, delinquency, etc.
20) Criminal law, including pre and post-trial, expungement, felony and misdemeanor questions
21) Small claims questions/forms and research guidance
22) Estates/wills questions/forms and research guidance
23) How to collect on judgments research guidance
24) Employment, wages-hour, discrimination, dismissal and research guidance
25) Special needs questions/forms and research guidance
26) Debt (small claims plaintiff or defendant) questions/forms and research guidance
27) Small business: referrals, laws, incorporation and research guidance
28) Need attorney referrals and information on working with attorneys (fees, preparation, etc.)
29) Referrals to government agencies & nonprofits (housing, disabilities, grandparents, elder law, consumer law, etc.)
30) Court procedure and rules research guidance
31) Referrals from public libraries on all of the above questions and more, including participation on L-net

That list leaves out the actual business of running a law library: someone has to make sure that has the materials people need, current and superseded, and keeping the library open to the public 45+ hours a week including staffing, materials selection, database evaluation, vendor relations, budgeting, AR/AP, facilities management, skills development, outreach to public libraries, writing articles for print and online newsletters, blogs, and journals, teaching, training, policy drafting, meetings with and reports to county bar association library boards, etc.

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on August 16, 2010 (boomark / email).