Doing legal research can see like a difficult task for the average person. The law is written in a semi-foreign language where words and terms have vastly different meanings than the ones used in everyday communication.

On top of that, legal cases are being decided and indexed all the time, and it can be very difficult to find out what the current law is at any one time. New collections of cases and references to cases are published throughout the year.

Thankfully, the internet has made searching for court cases much easier in recent years. The following websites can be used to look up references to cases, decisions, as well as actual court documents, all without having to take a trip to the local courthouse or college law library.

Findlaw.com - http://www.findlaw.com/
NOLO.com - http://www.nolo.com/

US Code - http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/
Code of Federal Regulations - http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/cfr.html
State Regulations - http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/state.html
State Statutes - http://www.law.cornell.edu/states/listing.html
State Statutes by Topic - http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/state_statutes

Supreme Court Case Opinions - http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html
Federal Court Case Opinions - http://www.law.cornell.edu/federal/opinions.html
State Court Case Opinions - http://www.law.cornell.edu/opinions.html#state

Bankruptcy documents - http://www.uscourts.gov/bkforms/index.html

There are also a number of books that describe how to do legal research in a law library or online. The most helpful one, in our recommendation, is Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law, by Stephen Elias and published by NOLO.