Because these trainings are being offered throughout the state, registration is only open to libraries in the TBLC region. Please check with your local MLC if your library is located outside of this region.

The start date for this training is September 1, 2025 through Niche Academy. Once you are connected with the online platform, you’ll have access until September 30, 2025.

Legal Research for Beginners

Learn about the process of legal research in this beginner workshop on law librarianship. This informative tutorial discusses where to find the law including primary sources such as constitutions, statutes, court opinions and case law, regulations, and administrative decisions as well as important secondary and scholarly sources which may be cited as persuasive authority such as treatises, law reviews, specialized periodicals, annotations, and restatements, as well as legal encyclopedias. Both free and commercial sources will be demonstrated and discussed.

Tutorial participants will learn: 

• How to track down a legal citation
• How to distinguish between statute and case law citations
• Where to find both Federal and State statutes
• Where to find both Federal and State court opinions
• Where to find specialized legal materials such as regulations, dockets, forms, and reporters
• How to check the validity of a case before citing it

Ellyssa Valenti Kroski is the Director of Innovation and Engagement at the New York Law Institute as well as an award-winning editor and author of 77 books, including Law Librarianship in the Age of AI, for which she won the AALL’s 2020 Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award. She is a librarian, an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University, and an international conference speaker. She received the 2017 Library Hi Tech Award from the ALA/LITA for her long-term contributions in the area of Library and Information Science technology and its application.