TMLL Research Guide - Chapter 2
INTERNET RESEARCH
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The Internet as a research tool is both an astoundingly rich resource and an astoundingly frustrating one. No one person or group limits the content of those pages and no one person or group provides structure to those pages. The Internet cannot be ignored as a research tool, however. It falls to the searcher to be aware of its limitations. The Internet is not nearly as structured as the databases from commercial vendors such as Westlaw and Lexis. However some web pages include tags within the documents that allow search engines to do some field searching. For example, Google allows you run a search that looks for “American Revolution” in the title of a web page and for UK in the domain of a web page [title:“American Revolution” and site:.uk]. This lets you find web sites in the United Kingdom about the American Revolution. Those web sites would likely have a different perspective than United States web sites on the same topic. Most Internet searchers use one of the many search engines as a means of finding information. Each search engine works a little differently, however, and those differences can affect search results. It is easy to think that when you’ve run a search in a couple of search engines that you’ve done a fairly thorough search. However, a comprehensive search is impossible on the Internet. Probably the biggest difficulty with search engines is their lack of standardization. We’ve seen that use of connectors differs. What most web searchers don’t realize is that one search engine may treat a search for attorney malpractice as a phrase search, another one may treat it as a search for attorney OR malpractice, and a third may treat it as attorney AND malpractice. Again, there are too many search engines to spend time learning the peculiarities of each one. To learn how to maximize the effectiveness of a search on a particular search engine, click on the Help link, search tips, or advanced search instructions. It is a good idea to become familiar with two or three search engines. A number of articles periodically review the features of the various search engines. With all these negatives, why should a legal researcher use the Internet at all? The Internet can be a cheap alternative to the use of commercial databases such as Lexis and Westlaw for finding primary legal materials such as U.S. federal and state statutes, bills, cases, and regulations. Depending on the topic, some materials can be available more quickly on the Internet than on Lexis and Westlaw. The Internet can augment an average law library's resources by providing alternate copies of print materials, and information that cannot be found in the law library in print or electronic format. The Internet is probably strongest for non legal materials that are important to legal work or interdisciplinary research. For finding legal information on the Internet, it is best to stay away from the general search engines and look for sites devoted to legal information. This text can’t go into an exhaustive list of Internet legal resources, but a sampling of what is available would include:
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