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Free and Low-Cost Online Legal Research : Statutes, Legislation, and Regulations

Federal

Congress.gov
Great resource for finding new public laws, pending bills, the status of bills, and committee reports and hearings. Full text legislation is available from 1989 (101st Congress) to present; bill summary/status information is available from 1973-present. 

Legal Information Institute
Provides no-cost access to many U.S. primary federal legal sources, including the U.S. Code, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the Uniform Commercial Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. LII's collection of state legal materials includes Internet-accessible sources of constitutions, statues, judicial opinions, and regulations. 

Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Prepares and publishes the U.S. Code; offers several options for accessing both current and historical editions of the U.S. Code, in both HTML and PDF format. The OLRC also publishes U.S. Code Classification Tables, which can be used to show where public laws will be enacted into the U.S. Code and which sections of the Code have been amended by those laws.

GovInfo
Provides full-text access to the U.S. Code (1994-present), Public and Private Laws (1995-present), the Code of Federal Regulations (1996-present), the Federal Register (1994-present), the Congressional Record (1994-present), and other government documents published by the U.S. Government Printing Office

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
Searchable database of official United States government publications including those in electronic format on the Internet.

Federal Administrative Agency Decisions & Other Actions
Provided by the University of Virginia Library; links to web-accessible administrative decisions and opinions, arranged by agency and by subject. Availability of material varies by agency.

Regulations.gov
Allows users to find and comment on proposed regulations and related documents. Also contains final regulations, notices, scientific and technical findings, guidance, adjudications, and comments submitted by others. 

FederalRegister.gov
Contains the Federal Register from 1994-present. Allows users to read the Federal Register by section; search; retrieve by citation; browse by agency; explore by topic; and subscribe to RSS feeds or email updates for a search term, section, agency, or all articles. 

USA.gov
This is a gateway site providing access to all online U.S. government resources (federal, state and local). Includes an A-Z list of government agencies. 

Federal Agencies Directory
Site compiled and maintained by the Louisiana State University Libraries.

State

Legal Information Institute
Provides no-cost access to many U.S. primary federal legal sources, including the U.S. Code, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the Uniform Commercial Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. LII's collection of state legal materials includes Internet-accessible sources of constitutions, statues, judicial opinions, and regulations. 

National Conference of State Legislators: State Legislative Websites Directory
This directory of State Legislative Websites provides access to state legislative materials; where available, includes access to statutes, bills, and state constitutions.

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The chat service is available to all of our patrons but is designed to meet the legal research needs of U-M students, staff, and faculty.

Chat is monitored from 1-6 pm Monday-Wednesday and 1-5 pm Thursday-Friday on days when class is in session.

*Excluding University holidays and semester breaks--check library hours for more information. The Building and library are available to law school community ONLY after 6 pm, and are closed to all but law school community on home football Saturdays.