Law Libraries Research in the Age of Coronavirus by Joyce Manna Janto The current pandemic has upended our lives. Lawyers are working from home, losing access to their law libraries. Even if they had access to the library, some publishers suspended shipments so material might not be updated. Lawyers who used print in lieu of expensive online services have had to find alter-natives. The need for free online legal resources has never been more pressing. Fortunately, in Virginia, this isn’t diffi-cult. All three branches of government in the Commonwealth have a robust internet presence. Executive orders and directives issued by Governor Northam can be found on his official webpage. 1 Material from former governors is archived but still available online. 2 Not only are the opin-ions of the Attorney General 3 from 1996 to the present accessible, but the Annual Reports of the Attorney General 4 from 1883 to the present are online. If you are unsure if an administrative agency has a website you can check with Virginia.gov. 5 It provides a list of agen-cies with a link to the agency’s official website. These websites provide contact information, news releases, and other documents. Many of these websites will provide relevant regulations and agency decisions. The Virginia Register of Regulations 6 as well as the Virginia Administrative Code 7 are available on-line. Not only is the current issue of the Register available, the archive contains every issue published. Both the Register and the Administrative Code are fully searchable. There are several options to track legislation. The Division of Legislative Services (DLS) website 8 and the Legislative Information System 9 (LIS) have a wealth of material. One can find information about the General Assembly and all of the legislative action from the past session under the “Publications” link. The archive of bills contains all en-rolled bills from 1995 to the present. 10 One little known but useful docu-ment on these sites is In Due Course: Changes to Virginia’s Laws. 11 It lists changes to the Code of Virginia sched-uled to take effect in July of each year. Aside from the DLS and LIS websites, there are other free sources to track Virginia legislation. LegisScan, 12 and Richmond Sunlight, 13 are two of the best. LegisScan permits tracking of legislation from previous sessions. If you are interested in Virginia politics in general, Vapap 14 is a good source. The Virginia Red Book 15 provides a “Who’s Who” of Virginia politics. The official version of the Virginia Code 16 is online, but the annotations ar-en’t. The annotations are copyrighted by LexisNexis, the company that publishes the official code under contract to the state. Overall, the availability of Virginia case law from official sources is limit-ed. The Virginia Supreme Court 17 and Court of Appeals 18 post opinions, or-ders, and rules on their websites. Circuit Court materials vary by jurisdiction. Case law is readily accessible through Fastcase. Many lawyers forget they have free access to Fastcase by virtue of their VSB membership. Some may dismiss the “free” service, feeling that it couldn’t compare to Lexis or Westlaw since “you get what you pay for.” They forget that Fastcase isn’t really free, it’s paid for out of bar dues. If you haven’t logged into Fastcase in a while you may be surprised. Fastcase has a wide array of Virginia sources. As expected, it provides the code, regulations, and the opinions of the both the Supreme and Court of Appeals. It also has circuit court deci-sions, access to certain dockets, and eth-ics materials. Authority Check provides the status of cases and statutes. A search in the code or case databases will also retrieve suggested secondary content re-lated to your search. Fastcase has licens-ing agreements with several publishers including the ABA, James Publishing, and HeinOnline. Fastcase isn’t limited to Virginia materials. It provides access to other states and federal cases, statutes, rules and regulations. The system also has decisions from selected federal ad-ministrative agencies. The search engine in Fastcase is comparable to those of Lexis and Westlaw. It supports Boolean as well as natural language searching and allows post-filtering of results. Alumni of the University of Richmond School of Law have an addi-tional avenue for free legal information. By registering with the Alumni Office 19 alumni have access to HeinOnline. This database is a collection of many prominent legal journals and law re-views, available in PDF. It also includes foreign and international law resources, the Congressional Record and other congressional publications, the Federal Register, C.F.R., federal legislative histo-ries, and the U.S. Presidential Papers. R Endnotes 1 www.governor.virginia.gov/executive-actions/ Libraries continued on page 47 Joyce Manna Janto is the Deputy Director of the University of Richmond Law School Library. She has a law degree from the University of Richmond and a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Pittsburg. She teaches Legal Research, Advanced Legal Research, Virginia Legal Research, and Professional Responsibility. Janto is also the editor of “Guide to Legal Research in Virginia.” 42 VIRGINIA LAWYER | AUGUST 2020 | VOL. 69 www.vsb.org
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