A new resource has been added this year to Alameda County Law Library’s WestlawNext (WLN) subscription – Practical Law. Practical Law is the name of a group of practice-based online resources available from the Home screen of WLN. The databases provide a bank of practice notes, checklists, charts, and legal templates. The focus is hands-on, how-to practice information.
You can do topic or keyword searches, just as you would do for a WLN search, across the entire Practical Law collection. You can also narrow the search by practice area, jurisdiction, or resource category (separate files for items such as – checklists, articles, standard documents, standard clauses etc..)
Selecting a jurisdiction initially helps to identify the practice areas covered for an individual state. For California, subject practice areas include commercial transactions, estate planning, labor & employment, litigation, and real estate. “Corporate and M&A” shows on the screen but are out-of-plan.
Much of the litigation material collection is geared for attorneys filing in federal court. There is also a narrowing category of “national” practice. Here, from the results, the researcher may locate state-by-state comparison charts for areas of law.
Material is continually updated with articles that provide current awareness, Q & A’s, and expert commentary.
There are some useful California law templates available for downloading and editing including:
Estate Planning –
- boilerplate simple contracts
- basic wills for individuals or a couple
- Uniform Statutory Form of Power of Attorney
Labor
- employee confidentiality and proprietary rights agreement
- California-compliant independent contractor agreement between an independent contractor (a self-employed individual) and a client company for consulting or other service
WLN is available to ACLL patrons at no-cost on the public computers at our Oakland or Hayward locations. Access at the libraries is also available if you using a personal electronic device and our wi-fi. WLN is linked via our Legal Databases web page (at the bottom of page.)
