Your Digital Library Tip #2: Finding and Organizing Free Legal Research

Having survived steps 1-5 (see Tips #1, #1A, and #1B), the next objective towards creating the ideal searchable, useable, and useful digital law library involves stocking your digital library with, what else, searchable, useable, and useful publications.

Pretty much any document is searchable with the right software, not to mention "usable" in one way or another (like kindling your BBQ pit).  The focus of this post will be on the useful element.  

Think back to your physical time in a law library.  Chances are you weren't looking primarily for a case.  You were probably looking for a treatise or practice manual on area of law that had previously been foreign to your practice.  Not surprisingly, the treatise you eventually settled on was probably located next to other treatises and some distance away from your jurisdiction's case reporter.  

Your digital library should also adhere to this "separation" principle, at least for the most part, when it comes to treatises-style material and cases.  In other words, your digital library should be comprised with practice manuals and articles that holistically summarize areas of law, save for the one or two seminal Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases that you have routinely relied on in your practice.   Those cases you've pulled in your case files should, for the most part, stay in your case files.  

So how much money should you spend stocking your digital library with practice manual-style publications?  Here's the good news:  you don't have to spend a dime.  Here are some useful links to free publications (which will forever be posted in the "Resource Hub" column of this web log):

• Free Downloads of Texas Bar CLEs you've attended.  If you've attended any Texas Bar CLE, you have unlimited access to the digital versions of the course material provided at that CLE.  

• Free Monthly Articles for Texas Bar Members.  Each month, the Texas Bar site posts selected articles from past Texas Bar CLEs.  These articles are free for download to Texas Bar members.  

• Free Articles for Everyone.  Litlaw provides a repository of articles covering federal and state law nationwide.

• 10-Minute Mentor.  The Texas Young Lawyer Association provides countless 10-minute how-to videos on various areas of the law.  I found the videos the basics of automobile insurance and employment law very helpful.

Download every article or practice manual you can get your hand on and save each of them in your digital law library folder (yes the one and only one) in the manner described in Tip #1 and according to the category/subject index you've developed for your library.  See Tip #1 for a discussion of the category/subject index and, for illustration, the subject/category index I've created for my digital library (click here).  Don't hesitate to download articles outside your usual practice area.  The goal is to obtain a complete library, not one loaded with information you already know.  

Once you've downloaded and saved the publications, go through your new finds and tag them at will using either TaggedFrog or Taggtool.   Now you've got a comprehensive digital library that will get you quickly up to speed on new, unfamiliar issues.