How do attorneys find stuff?

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to help one of our attorneys here at work find the history of an Oregon Revised Statute on the web and I’m coming up with nothing. I wish I could just go to the state library and poke around there, but I’m stuck here.

Does anyone know of any on-line legal resources that explains the hows and whens and whys of the creation of a law or statute?

Specifically, I’m trying to find information about ORS 656.005(7)(a) which defines a compensable injury as “Accidental injury or accidental injury to prosthetic appliance, arising out of and in the course of employment, requiring medical services or resulting in disability or death.” When was this law written to include “prosthetic appliances”? The earliest cite we can find is (and this is another stumbling block, I can’t read the attorney’s handwriting) Bundy (or Bandy?) v. Norris, Baggs (Biggs? Beggs?) & Simpson, 222 OR 1 (1959). We’re trying to find something about the history of Oregon Workers’ Compensation law and see if there is an earlier case regarding prosthetic appliances.

How do attorneys find this stuff? Am I expecting too much of the web (or, gasp, the Teeming Millions)? Anyone out there want to take a crack at this for the heck of it?

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

The Kat House
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2
  1. LEXIS
  2. Westlaw (these are subscription databases which cost a lot of $$$$$)
  3. Going to your local law library (there is usually a public one in every county) and going through print versions of such a thing.

WARNING: Law librarians (the ones at facilities open to the public) tend to hold back when helping someone who isn’t an attorney. There is some debate on what is considered “legal advice.”

3

Researching the legislative history of a statute can be a time consuming and mind-boggling task. I am not aware of any free internet site which can assist you here. As Bob notes, Lexis and Westlaw can help, but they cost money. I would venture a guess, though, that you have access to one of these services at your office? If so, call the customer support line and they will help walk you through the search.

If not, it’s to the law library wi’ ye. Find the official code book and see what it says about when the statute was codified, what the legislative bill number(s) was/were, and ask the librarian to point you in the right direction.

There’s also a service that will do it for you . . . I don’t have their name and number handy, but if you want to go this route let me know and I will try to dig it up. It takes them a couple of weeks to get back to you and, again, is not cheap. But they’re good at what they do.

I personally would go for the books. The computer research is good for what it does, but I’d be afraid of missing something.

Good luck!

-Melin

Siamese attack puppet – California

Still neglecting and overprotecting my children

4

I do legal research nearly every day as part of my job, and the ESSENTIAL starting point is FindLaw, at (somewhat obviously) www.findlaw.com

They have links to the U.S. Constitution (very comprehensive annotations), Federal statutes, regulations, and court cases from the last few years. They also link to the statutes and recent cases of most states – only a bare handful of states don’t put them online. Of course, there’s links to lots of other legal and government-related stuff, too!

As to legal research on the Net:
PROS: The statutes and cases are mostly on official government websites and are FREE. Westlaw or Lexis (the big commercial legal research databases, older than the Web) are most definitely NOT free!!
CONS: Some states don’t keep their statutes totally up to date, although you can almost always get the text of new laws from the legislature’s website. Generally, only appeals court decisions are online (not trial decisions, except for some Federal courts), and only decisions made since the court opened a website. (The exception is US Supreme Court cases, where nearly all 20th Century cases, and important earlier ones, are online). Similarly, tracing the history of a law – how and when it was amended over the years – is not easy to do on the net. The legislatures put nearly everything they do in the way of bills, reports, calendars, etc. online NOW, but not retroactive to before they started a website.

Because of the “cons” above, many practicing attorneys - especially those who use a lot of older case law - still maintain a library or Westlaw/Lexis access (Westlaw and Lexis are expensive, but they have EVERYTHING). But if all you need is statutes, cases from the last few years, and/or U.S. Supreme Court cases, the Net is the right place, and FindLaw is the place to start.

By the way, the Oregon statutes are online at http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors

and the Workers’ Compensation Act, including the Section you’re looking for, is at http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/656.html

The Oregon Worker’s Compensation official website, including WC Board decisions since 1996, is at: http://www.cbs.state.or.us/worker_comp.htm

Someplace to start, anyway. Good luck!

5

While manny of the various state statutes are on-line, very few of the legislative histories of the statutes are. I’m not sure how the annotations to the Oregon Code work, but the Montana Code Annotated list right in it the session law (ie, the number given to the law by the legislature after it was passed but before it was given a code number) and the year. Once you know the session law number and the year of passage (which should also be in the annotation), you can go to the session laws for that session and find out the bill number (house bill or senate bill) of the bill that became that particular law. With THAT information, you can look up the legislative history – ie, who sponsored the bill, what it was intended to do, what it looked like when first introduced, what amendments were made to it, if any, etc.

In Montana, because we have only two comprehensive public law libraries (one here in Helena and one at the law school in Missoula), you can call the State Law Library and they will look up the legislative history for you and send it to you, charging you only for copying. If you don’t have access to a comprehensive law library either, you might call the Oregon State Law Library (wherever that is) and see if they’ll pull the legislative history for you. Despite how complicated I may have made it sound, it’s not that hard of a search to do, becasuse the session law numbers are almost always listed right in the annotations to the code.

Hope that helps.

6

Start with this:

That’s your Oregon statutes. Then you might try a new site, which I can’t remember… I think it might be www.jurislaw.com. It looks good after a few days of viewing, and its free. Case law might incidentally mention the legislative history you’re looking for. Barring that, all states have archival materials, which probably aren’t on line, which will detail the legislative history of a particular statute.

This is decidedly not legal advice, and anyone but a snooty librarian will know that you are looking into the legislative history of a statute. It’s your public records, so you’re entitled to view any reports, hearings or other submitted materials related to that statute. Ask for his/her boss if you’re sure you know what you’re talking about and he/she doesn’t.

7

The snooty librarians tend to be at university law schools where nonstudent users are not exactly welcomed.
If you ever run into trouble with that situation, check to see if there is a US Federal Depository sticker on the front door.
(It’s a stylized eagle with a book coming out of one of its wings.)
If so, tell anyone hassling you that you want to see Federal documents. By law, they have to let you in and help you find them.

8

Thanks everyone :slight_smile:

I was just trying to help out an attorney who doesn’t know her way around the web very well yet and who was trying to put off going to the state archives. I appreciate your suggestions and will keep these sites in mind if the situation comes up again :slight_smile:

BTW, we are pretty sensitive about doling out “advice” ourselves since we’re an impartial party. We can quote cites or rules but when people start asking us to interpret them, we tell them to talk to their attorney or, if they’re unrepresented, the WC Ombudsman. The frustrating part is when it is an attorney on the phone asking, “What does this mean? What do we do next? Why is it like this?” What, we gotta tell you everything? Isn’t it your job to know this stuff? You get paid a heck of a lot more for looking it up than I do! Thhppppt. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m sure none of you here would do anything like that :wink:

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

The Kat House
Join the FSH Muscular Dystrophy Webring

9

All right, all right- I’ll do it.

They just listen for the sirens.

In·flam·ma·ble, a. Flammable.

10

No, no, no – that’s how we find clients.

By the way, it’s still illegal to run a lawyer over with a vehicle, unless that vehicle is an ambulance in reverse – keep that in mind! :slight_smile:

Jodi

Fiat Justitia

11

You may also want to look in your local law library for the annotated statutes, which include addenda showing how court decisions have affected thosoe statutes; and Shephard’s Citators, which show how the statue has been taken up in appellate courts–even in the U. S. Supreme Court, if it got that far.

12

Not jurislaw.com, thats a no-thing site.

Try http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us

Shucks, all I did was input the section number into ask.com PRESTO! The answer. Now thats how to find things.

“I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the
thread that binds them is mine own.”

13

Thanks again, everyone :slight_smile: FTR, I do know what the statute is (ORS 656.005(7)(a)) and where to find it on-line, I’m trying to find the history of it. We know a case from 1959 set some kind of precident regarding injury to prosthetic appliances, and we were trying to find out if there was an earlier case. But evidentally the history of bills and statutes and stuff isn’t available on-line (without paying a fee, anyway). The staff attorney who first asked for help is going to go to the state archives Monday and do a little manual digging. But she had thought the web was worth a shot.

Thanks :slight_smile:

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

The Kat House
Join the FSH Muscular Dystrophy Webring