Leaders for the Global Common Good
We offer two ways of searching our catalog: a law library only catalog and OCLC WorldCat. Other catalogs are also available. More
Expand your legal research options with online sources provided by the Gallagher Law Library. More
How do I search for laws on a particular subject? How can I compile a legislative history for a Washington (or federal) law? How can I locate court opinions about a topic? To answer these and other frequently asked questions, the reference librarians have prepared a series of legal research guides. Use these guides to get started on your research project when a reference librarian is not available to assist you or as a reminder as you conduct your research. More
Here, you will find a list of websites that provide legal information and materials (including laws, bills, court opinions, and related documents) and/or links to legal material. Most of these sites are freely available to all users with Internet access. Some sites are UW Restricted, that is, available to University of Washington faculty, students, and staff and visitors to UW Libraries.More
Kelly Aldrich, guest editor
There's a new addition to the Washington Practice series: Volume 30, Washington Motions in Limine. For those law students who have yet to take Evidence, "[a] motion in limine is a motion used to preclude prejudicial or objectionable evidence before it is presented to the jury." 30 David N. Finley & Lisa McGuire, Washington Practice: Washington Motions in Limine §1:1 (2007) (citing Fenimore v. Donald M. Drake Constr. Co., 87 Wash.2d 85, 91 (1976)).
In addition to a Table of Laws and Rules, a Table of
Cases, and a volume Index, Volume 30 consists of ten
chapters:
Each chapter contains:
To get an even better overview of what you need to know, you should consult Volume 30 in conjunction with the other Evidence volumes (5-5D) in the Washington Practice series, and also check Professor Aronson's Law of Evidence in Washington. KFW540.A97 2003 at Reference Area
Note: Volume 30 does not appear to be available yet on Westlaw, so you'll have to visit the library for this one - KFW80.W3 at Reference Area.
Zimmerman's Research Guide is a *free* online
compilation of research guides on a number of subject areas. Research
guides can be excellent starting points for legal research (we post quite a
few legal research guides on our Gallagher Law Library website).
Zimmerman's Research Guide includes your run-of-the-mill legal research subjects (e.g., federal legislative history) and some less common topics (e.g., Akron, Ohio). Also included are entries more akin to definitions than research guides (e.g., a "tombstone" is "an advertisement place in a newspaper to announce a securities offering. In most cases, tombstones are published in the "C" section of the Wall Street Journal").
West calls its
Washington Law Finder "The Master
Reference Guide for Legal Research." I'm not sure I'd go quite that far in
my praise, but it's a good little tool to know about nonetheless.
West's Washington Law Finder is organized by topic headings. Look up your desired subject matter and you'll find direct references to the Revised Code of Washington Annotated (RCWA), Washington Practice, the Washington Digest, and to particular titles in Corpus Juris Secondum (CJS) and the U.S. Code Annotated (USCA). References are also made to basic national texts and treatises and many other specialized publications issued by West. Of course, since it's a West product, it includes Key Number references. To top it all off, a new edition of the Law Finder is published each year.
This tool is best used as a starting-point for Washington law (and, even some federal references) and/or as a quick checklist of sorts to remind yourself of places to look.
Disclaimer: it is not in-depth by any stretch of the imagination and should never be solely relied upon-always supplement it with more substantive research.
Copies of West's Washington Law Finder are found in the Reference Area at KFW61.W37.