Short, Practical Law Articles on the Web

I took at look at the National Law Review because a UW student won its writing competition. (See Gareth Lacy, Should Jurors Use the Internet?, Nat'l L. Rev., Dec. 6, 2010 -- congrats, Gareth!). It's not a traditional law review -- that is, a journal published by a law school and crammed to the gills with footnotes. Instead, it's a web-based magazine and collection of articles aimed at consumers as well as the legal community.

The National Law Review (NLR) is a unique Web site featuring a monthly legal magazine paired with a user-friendly database dedicated to providing legal consumers with authoritative legal analysis written by lawyers from many of the nation’s premier firms. We compile timely, well-researched articles submitted to us nationwide from law reviews, law journals, law firm newsletters, and bar association and other professional publications and make them accessible to all in an easy-to-use, searchable database. The NLR also publishes a monthly online magazine that features articles with broad-based appeal to the legal community and to legal consumers, as well as content targeted to specific practice areas such as employment law, insurance, intellectual property, and banking.

The NLR Web site is free to use and requires no log-in or subscription to search our database or review our magazine.

That made me think that it might be useful to list a few other sources where consumers can find articles about the law:

• Washington Law Help and its partner sites in other states offer great, practical information about common legal problems, such as child custody, landlord-tenant disputes, employment issues, and government benefits. These sites are aimed at people with low incomes, but much of the information is equally useful to people in any income bracket. Many of the fact sheets are written by attorneys at Columbia Legal Services or the Northwest Justice Project. Others are from credible sources like Legal Voice or the Washington State Office of the Attorney General.


• Nolo, a publisher of self-help law books, offers many short articles (often excerpts from its books) on its website.


• Findlaw offers articles on hundreds of topics.


• Cornell's Legal Information Institute offers Wex, "a community-built law dictionary and encyclopedia."


• Justia.com also has articles on a wide range of topics.


• Avvo has a couple of hundred topics. Some of items listed under the topics are answers to questions that consumers have asked and some are more general articles.

There is an amazing amount of legal information for consumers on the web. Is it all equally reliable? Of course not, but some of it is very solid. When using any source -- online or print -- ask quesions about it. Who wrote it? Does it seem credible? How current is it? Is it tailored to my jurisdiction? Could the author be leaving out important qualifiers?