Finding Law-Related Information on the Internet

Where to Start

For subscription resources available at the Osgoode Hall Law School Library and York University:

Go to the Resources pages on the on the Law Library's website
The resources listed on these pages are organized by title, jurisdiction or subject.

Go to one of the "Legal Information Institute" web portals, such as:
- CanLII - Canadian Legal Information Institute
- Cornell LII - Cornell Legal Information Institute ( for the United States)
- BaiLII - British & Irish Legal Information Institute
- AustLII - Australasian Legal Information Institute
- AsianLII - Asian Legal Information Institute
- SAFLII - Southern African Legal Information Institute
- WorldLII - World Legal Information Institute (for foreign & international)
Go the the Internet Legal Research Engine
- This new search engine was jointly developed by the Cornell Law Library and Google.
All these sites are also linked from the Resources pages on the Library's website.

You can also try using a "meta-search" engine, which run searches using several search engines at the same time:

When you use a search engine, you are searching that search engine’s index, not the whole Internet. Even the best search engines index only some one-half of the Internet's public documents.
Search engines visit sites regularly to update their indexes and to add new sites to their crawlers for indexing; however, it may be a week or more before new web content is indexed by a search engine.
Search engines do not search and index proprietary databases, Intranets and resources with domain limitations.

Use web search engines when you have exhausted library resources (print or electronic), including the online resources listed on the Library's Resources pages, legal research web portals and other comprehensive sites.
Use web search engines when you are "fishing" for information; i.e., when you are not sure which site will contain the information you are looking for.

Google is for now the most popular search engine, but still does not index all web pages
Meta-search engines (Dogpile and Metacrawler) produce very adequate search results. They search with and combine results from most of the popular search engines such as Google, Altavista, Excite and others. They are fast and they allow you to set the length of time you are willing to wait.
You can consult one of the following sites for guideance:
- The Virtual Chase Search Engine Guide
- Websearch 101 (About.com)
- NoodleTools

The type of organization, as indicated by its domain, can be a clue to the authority or expertise of the creator of the site. For lists of top level domains (TLDs), visit:
- Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
- Norid: Domain Name Registries Around the World
To find out if the site you are visiting is trusted site, do a search on one of the following free resources which will give you domain registration information (e.g. see the difference between http://www.whitehouse.net and http://www.whitehouse.gov):
- VeriSign Registry Services
- Who Is Behind That Domain?
- Internic (US Dept. of Commerce) and Internic "Who Is" Search

Ask "what other resources (print or electronic) are available in the area?" Decide which is a more reliable source.
For more info on verifying sources on the Net, see Sabrina I. Pacifici, "Getting it Right: Verifying Sources on the Net" http://www.llrx.com/features/verifying.htm (published March 1, 2002)
Genie Tyburski, "Evaluating the quality of information on the Internet: a checklist" http://www.virtualchase.com/quality/checklist_print.html (created June 3, 1997, revised April 22, 2002)

Use the Web site's site map, table of contents, or index.
Use the Web site's search engine. It can be frustrating as most of them are not very reliable.
If you want to locate quickly some keywords on a page which goes on for screens, use the "Find in Frame" on the "Edit" menu (for Netscape) or the "Find (on this page)" on the "Edit" menu (for Internet Explorer).