Free Online Legal Research

Attributed to Gerald and Kathleen Hill, Law.com's Dictionary can be searched in 3 different ways: enter a legal term, search the definitions, or browse by first letter of a word or phrase.

Contains plain-English definitions for hundreds of legal terms. There is a search feature. May also browse terms.

You can browse by areas of law or life events.

FindLaw provides a reference guide to selected practice areas.

Wex is both a legal dictionary and encyclopedia offered by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School. Wex is "collaboratively created and edited by legal experts" and freely available to the public.

A browsable glossary of legal terms.

A searchable database of more than 1,000,000 (as of April 23, 2015) human-edited definitions for acronyms and abbreviations.

This site is maintained by Kelly L. Smith of the UC San Diego Library. Provides an alphabetical list of federal government abbreviations and acronyms (which are hyperlinked to the official Web site of the government agency or program in question).

Searchable PDF version of the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, as amended through November 2018. Includes acronyms.

Guide to abbreviations for English language legal publications from the British Isles, the Commonwealth, and the United States, including those covering international and comparative law. Maintained by Cardiff University in Wales.

A list of acronyms and abbreviations adapted from the Washington Legal Researcher's Deskbook, 3d (2002). Cheryl Nyberg, Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law.

A list of Bluebook abbreviations for journals that are indexed in the Current Index to Legal Periodicals. Provided by the Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law.

Links on the right provide access to an alphabetical list of law schools, public law schools, private law schools, and law schools by year approved.

A list of links to state legislatures' Web sites provided by Congress.gov.

As previously mentioned, LexisNexis Academic is a UCLA subscription database. Please see the Database Access LibGuide for more information on subscription databases.

LexisNexis Academic includes several Legal Reference Sources: American Jurisprudence 2d, Ballentine's Law Dictionary, Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations, Modern Dictionary for the Legal Profession, and LexisNexis Legal Directories.

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