Navigating Case Law: Using Google Scholar and Other Online Resources (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: One of the best things for your, or anyone's, court case is precedent. Something in court that happened in the past which applies to your case, and supports your current argument. Prior court rulings that serve as the basis for what's now legal are considered case law, which is different than statutes, law decided by legislation. Picking the right examples in case law can be crucial to a favorable outcome, but scouring the wealth of past court decisions to find what you need is daunting, especially through traditional physical reference. Thankfully, someone that's not Al Gore invented something called the internet, which, besides revolutionizing human society forever, is finally a useful tool when researching case law. But where to browse? One of the leading ones, to no one's surprise, is Google Scholar. If you're looking for specific cases, the best way is to search using the case's citation number. Let's use Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as an example. This was the famous Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation. It all begins with the law report, or the reporter, containing the case's information. A law report is a series of books of judicial opinions deciding cases. Each book has a number. A standard case citation format first includes the volume number of the law report, then the abbreviation of the specific book of court decisions in the case, then the page number in the aforementioned volume, and finally the year that the court made its decision on a case. Often, reporters have so many cases that they have to start over with a new series. The series follows the abbreviated law reporter name. This citation, for example, says that the case appears in volume 121 of the third series of the Southern Reporter, on page 23. It was decided by the Florida Supreme Court in 2013. Often, all you need is the volume number, the reporter, and the series and the page number to find your case. Now, to go more broadly, you can search for case law by keyword, perhaps by using terms like dog bite, personal injury, home foreclosure, or whichever type of case you're involved in. From there, you can filter your search by court type and time frame to narrow things down. Other useful case law sites besides Google include FindLaw, Justia, and the Public Library of Law. For any and all aspects of the law in general, well, there's only one place for that. LegalYou. LegalYou. You can do this.