Massachusetts Law Research Guide   Tags: electronic_resources, government_information, legislative_history, online_research, practice_and_procedure, research  

I. Introduction

II. Secondary Sources

   A. General Massachusetts Secondary Sources

   B. Forms

III. Legislative Resources

   A. Codified Statutes

   B. Session Laws

   C. Updating Statutes

IV. Judicial Resources

   A. Case Finding Tools

   B. Cases

   C. Case Updating Tools

   D. Court Documents

   E. Court Rules

V. Administrative Law Resources

   A. Researching Regulations

   B. Agency Decisions

VI. Library

When conducting Massachusetts legal research, you may need to locate statutes, cases, court rules or documents, and regulations.  This guide will direct you to locations for all of these as well as highlight helpful secondary sources to get your research started.  Once you've researched your issue, you may want to locate forms to model documents after.  A discussion of where to locate forms is included under the Secondary Sources tab.

A note about electronic sources: Due to license restrictions, the law library can only provide access to LexisNexis and Westlaw to current law school students, faculty, and staff. 

For many of the print materials listed in this guide, you will see the location described as "Law Massachusetts Collection."  Anything in this collection can be found in the Pappas Reading Room on the 2nd Floor.