Legal Research for Beginners

Okay, so let's say you've got a patron who needs help locating some statutes, whether they be Federal or state, and they have a list of citations.  Let's go over how you would read and decipher them.

• At the top here you have a Federal citation which should be easily recognizable due to the USC in the middle which stands for the United States Code, so you'd be looking for Title 26, Section 115.
• The next one would be the NC state code, chapter -which is their term for title - section 101.
• And then the next one they would want either the Westlaw or Lexis annotated code.

But what if you didn't know or weren't sure of the abbreviations?  Well, with citations such as these and others in the legal field, there are guidebooks and websites specifically for deciphering citation abbreviations. 

Here are some snapshots of what those look like.  as you can see these are guides to not just statute citation abbreviations but also include abbreviations to different courts and case reporters, secondary sources such as law reviews, legal encyclopedias, codes of regulations, etc.  So, these are really handy to have around for when a patron comes to the desk and asks for help locating a legal citation of nearly any sort.