Guides serve as good starting points for research when you have a basic idea of what you are looking for and you feel that there is likely to be a Web site that focuses on it. For example, if you are looking for information on copyright law, you should be able to find a copyright site by using a more general legal guide. Most of the general legal guides have materials divided into particular legal subject categories, such as contracts, criminal law, intellectual property, etc. To find information on copyright law, you would start by going to a legal guide, then find the guide to legal subjects or practice areas, and then go to either the copyright or the intellectual property category. Guides are often searchable, but a local search of a guide should not be confused with a search engine.

Search engines index the words of documents on the Web, enabling you to search a large number of documents with a single search. Most of the useful search engines have indexed millions of documents, and can return the results of a search very quickly. Google is a very complete and fast search engine. Search engines present a good starting point if you feel that you are looking for a needle-in-a-haystack. Say you are looking for information on what a specific expert had to say regarding a certain legal subject. Instead of going to a legal subject guide and weeding through many Web sites hoping that you will stumble across a reference to the particular expert, you could go to a search engine and do a search using the expert's name as a key word.

Different search engines have different rules about forming queries. It is always a good idea to read the instructions about query formation for the search engine you are using in order to maximize efficiency.

Search engines also offer a useful way to finish up if you are not satisfied with your results using a hierarchical guide. Combining the hierarchical and needle-in-the-haystack approaches is the most thorough way to do research on the Web. The two approaches compliment one another. For example, using a guide may be helpful in determining key search terms, or using a search engine may yield sites that are helpful in determining an unexplored hierarchical category.

There are two basic variables to consider when using the LawCrawler. First you want to choose the domain to search. For example, you could isolate your search to an individual country, to government servers in the United States, to commercial servers, or to government servers in specific states. Second you will want to determine whether to focus your search on legal information, or to include both legal and non-legal information.

The main advantage of LawCrawler is that it saves time and increases efficiency by providing focus to your search. If you do not get enough results when using the LawCrawler for a particular search, then it is a good idea to expand your search to an all-purpose search engine, such as Google, or to use the "World Wide" option to search LawCrawler.

• Primary Legal Materials: Codes, Case Law, Regulations
  To find cases, codes and regulations, go to our Cases & Codes page and select your jurisdiction. Different search techniques are available depending on which jurisdiction and database you use. Some databases allow searching by party name, others by citation, others by keyword and some enable multiple search techniques.

  At FindLaw, we also have links to federal laws relevant to particular practice areas in our legal subject pages. For example, we link the Federal Tax Code from our Tax Law page.

  More and more primary materials are being put online. For instance, FindLaw currently carries U.S. Supreme Court decisions back to 1893, California Supreme and Appellate Court decisions back to 1934 with internal page numbers and citations, recent decisions for most states as well as recent decisions for the federal circuits. In many cases, fee-based services provide more comprehensive case law coverage. If you can't find what you are looking for in a case law or code database, it's a good idea to round out your research with a search engine that indexes the Web, especially for historically significant case law or commonly referenced code sections. Many times, people will put an individual case or code section online if they feel it is especially important.

• Secondary Legal Materials: Law Journals, Treatises, Commentary
  The Web provides a rich source of secondary legal materials. Many law journals have sites on the Web and some of these contain abstracts or full text articles. At FindLaw we have listings of law journals that have sites online and law journals with full text articles online. You can search the full-text of law journals with articles online from FindLaw.

  Checking the legal subject pages is a good way to find commentary and news on particular legal subject areas. The secondary materials on the legal subject pages range from online versions of printed treatises and books to newsletters, general background information, specialty guides and FAQs.

  FindLaw’s Summaries of Law section is a good place to check for concise primers on various legal topics, and the FindLaw Library contains thousands of articles hundreds of categories.

• Tertiary Legal Materials: Mailing Lists, Usenet Groups, Message Boards & Message Boards
  Mailing Lists, Usenet Groups, and Message Boards also serve as useful sources of information. Mailing lists can function as discussion groups on particular topics that occur by way of e-mail, or they can be a one way source of information on a topic that is delivered periodically via e-mail. The discussion lists provide a good way to communicate with others that share a common interest, and the newsletter type mailing lists offer a convenient way of receiving information updates. FindLaw offers over 40 different newsletters, including daily opinion summaries, topical newsletters and daily legal news.

  Usenet groups consists of topical discussions located at specific addresses in Cyberspace. The newer browsers allow you to view usenet postings. You thus arrive at a particular usenet group just as you would a Web page, by clicking a link or by entering the URL in your browser (e.g., news:alt.law-enforcement). Once there, you can read and post messages. Not all Internet service providers carry all usenet groups. You will only be able to reach the ones carried by your provider.

  Law Lists, a searchable compilation of law-related electronic mailing lists and usenet newsgroups, provides a great way to find a mailing list or usenet group that deals with a particular topic. Law Lists also provides information on using tertiary materials. At FindLaw, we have information on topical Mailing Lists and Usenet Groups on our legal subject pages. FindLaw LegalMinds provides archives of over 200 legal mailing lists and hosts numerous message boards.

  Message boards enable visitors to post messages online and discuss various topics. Chat allows for real-time discussion.

Bar Associations are another good way to find lawyers. State bars often have attorney referral services. We have a list of Bar Associations at FindLaw.

A good way to find a specific person is through WhoWhere?, Yahoo! People Search (Formerly 411) or Switchboard. These are directories of people online. They often contain email addresses, phone numbers and postal mail addresses. Switchboard includes a strong section of phone book listings.

The FindLaw Directories section includes Yellow Pages online, as well as phone number, address, e-mail and reverse phone number and address look-ups. You can also use these directories to find businesses online and well as contact information for government officials.

Government agencies often provide useful information on particular subjects. FindLaw's U.S. Federal Government Resource page has links to many federal agencies. We also have links to relevant government agencies on our legal subject pages. Our State Government Resources section is a great place to start when searching for state agencies online.

Legal Associations and Organizations are listed on our Legal Associations and Organizations page. If you can't find who you're looking for with an index, then it's a good idea to try a search engine.