Law

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer"- Robert Frost.

First a statement to get me off the hook and prevent lawsuits. Caveat lector! The information provided here and in the listed Web sites are not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Legal advice of any nature should be sought from competent, independent, legal counsel. Remember the adage: A person who represents himself has a fool for a client and a fool for a lawyer. The sites presented below are meant to provide you with background information for a legal problem that you may have, improve your general knowledge of the law, and provide a little fun (at the expense of the legal profession, of course). Everyone, at some time, requires the services of the legal profession. Hopefully, perusing the sites below will make you a "smart buyer".

Confused by the Latin terms, habeas corpus, nolo contendere, and caveat emptor? Try one of the on-line dictionaries to find their legal usage. Don't remember any of the text of the Magna Carta, the first "bill of rights" and the basis for English common law? The complete text translated from the Latin is available on the Web. The complete text of the U.S. Constitution is also available on-line. Need to find a lawyer? Use an on-line lawyer locator. Need a sample contract, tax, or bill of sale form? These and many more legal forms can be found on-line.

Maine

Maine Department of Public Safety
www.maine.gov/dps/
Official state site - The Department of Public Safety serves the people by protecting their lives, rights, and properties. This is accomplished through criminal justice, law enforcement, fire safety, and emergency response services.

Maine Bar Association
www.mainebar.org/
The official Web site of the Maine Bar Association.

Maine Bar Association - Legal Information Pamphlets
www.mainebar.org/lawyer_pamphlets.asp
Legal information pamphlets and pages - About Probate, Attorneys and Their Fees, Auto Collisions, The New Basics of Consumer Bankruptcy, Buying & Selling Real Estate, Divorce & Judicial Separation, Domestic Abuse, How to Be a Good Witness, Lawyer Referral & Information Service, Organizing a Business.

General

Legal Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
www.library.unt.edu/govinfo/law/dictionaries.htm
General law, United States law, state law, foreign and international law, guide to legal abbreviations, style manuals and citation guides, and much more. This site is maintained by University of North Texas, Federal Depository Library.

Martindale-Hubbell Lawyer Locator - LexisNexis
www.martindale.com
Use this locator to find a lawyer by name or search by location/area of practice, by firm, or for lawyers in corporations, agencies of the US government, or law school faculty. Brief rating information is supplied, bar admission date, and Web site, if available.

Guide to Law Online
www.loc.gov/law/guide/index.html
"The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the U.S. Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information."

FindLaw
www.findlaw.com
Basically a law portal, with hundreds of links.

Nolo - Law for All
www.nolo.com
Quoted from the N.Y. Times - "In the vanguard of the do-it-yourself law movement." Don't say I didn't warn you - "A person who represents himself ………."

Legal Information
www.lawyers.com
Legal Information from LexisNexis.

Avvo
www.avvo.com
Free ratings and profiles of lawyers. This site only covers a handful of big states so far.

American Bar Association
www.abanet.org/barserv/
The official Web site of the ABA. Provides links to state bar associations.

Legal Ease Pamphlet Series
www.nysba.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Public_Resources/Educational_Pamphlets/Educational_Services.htm
These are on-line pamphlets provided by the New York State Bar Association. Although they are based on New York law, they are general enough to guide a layman about how to decide when a lawyer is required, the basis for legal fees, how to work with your lawyer, client's rights, and other general issues.

LawyerRatingZ
www.lawyerratingz.com/
People provide independent ratings, reviews and recommendations for lawyers and attorneys.

JD Supra
jdsupra.com
"JD Supra offers free access to a constantly expanding data base of legal documents (filings, decisions, forms, articles) from the people whose work gives meaning to law."

The Largest 250 Law Firms in the U.S
www.ilrg.com/nlj250
The largest 250 law firms in the US linked to their respective Web sites. Where the firm has no web site, the site provides a link to the Martindale-Hubbell listing.

Internet Legal Resource Guide
www.ilrg.com
Purported to be designed for everyone, lay persons and legal scholars alike, this site is a categorized index of more than 4000 select international and U.S. Web sites, as well as almost a thousand locally stored web pages and downloadable files relating to the law.

Cornell Law School
www.law.cornell.edu
The Web site of Cornell University's Legal Information Institute. Especially useful for Federal Supreme Court and District Court decisions, but also contains a multitude of legal documents and legal topics to numerous to mention here.

Harvard Law School Library
www.law.harvard.edu/library
Provides many free legal resources. You can access the LexisNexis database for a fee (using your credit card).

U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia Database
oyez.nwu.edu
The Oyez Project of Northwestern University. You can hear the legal arguments of Bush vs Gore at this site. You'll need a high speed internet connection, however.

U.S. Courts
www.uscourts.gov
The official Web site of the Federal Judiciary. You will find general information on federal courts, with links to individual court sites provided. Did you recently hear National Public Radio's Legal Affairs Correspondent, Nina Totenberg, discuss the recent Supreme Court affirmative action case of Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Mineta? You can read the complete decision here.

The Magna Carta
www.bl.uk/diglib/magna-carta/overview.html
From the British Library Web site, the complete text of the Magna Carta (1215). Clause 39 - "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land". Sound familiar? Read the text of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, in the site below.

U.S. Constitution
www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
The complete text of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Overlawyered.com
www.overlawyered.com
Chronicles the high cost of our litigious society. From the site: "Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public's expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability".

In addition:

Return to Web Links Page

Return to Home Page