Business Paralegal/Legal Studies Program (Resource Guide)

LibGuide Page for OER and other freely available materials for legal studies programs

Use the search terms: "law" or "legal" to explore OER offered through Open Textbook Library.

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit consortium of law schools, law libraries, and related organizations. Almost every United States law school is a member of CALI and they make up the bulk of our membership. In keeping with our Mission Statement, CALI conducts applied research and development in the area of computer-mediated legal education and creates tools that increase access to justice.

Written for students and instructors in an advanced legal research course, this book uses the steps of the legal research process to facilitate skills practice, collaboration, and reflection. It proposes a hypothetical as a basis for practicing the research process steps and encourages students and instructors to contribute other hypotheticals. The text also includes sample assignments, demonstration videos, and discussion and reflection questions, with opportunities for students and instructors to contribute additional questions. This text uses an approach that emphasizes student reflection on the development of research skills, with the benefit of repeated and consistent formative feedback.

This text introduces first-year law students to the new kind of research required to study and to practice law. It seeks to demystify the art of legal research by following a “Source and Process” approach.

These are the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) as effective December 01, 2016. The FRE govern the introduction of evidence in civil and criminal trials in United States federal courts. These Rules are often the foundation for the standard upper level law school course in Evidence.

These are the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) as amended to December 01, 2016. The FRCP govern civil proceedings in the United States district courts and are often the foundation for the standard 1L law school course, Civil Procedure.

This series of Federal Rules books, consisting of the Federal Rules of Evidence, Criminal Procedure and Civil Procedure, are powered by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, and created in partnership with The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI).These rules govern the conduct of all criminal proceedings brought in Federal courts.

What Color is Your C.F.R.? is a problem-based law workbook with a colorful twist. Conceived and written by law librarians, it uses easy to understand plain language and is a light-hearted but helpful supplement to instruction on basic legal research. The book takes a non-traditional approach to legal research and uses short legal research exercises and coloring.

Open Judicial Politics is a compilation of new and original research in judicial politics written specifically for the undergraduate audience, thus providing accessible examples of political science research that also address some of the more current concerns and controversies in our field.

This is not a comprehensive citation reference work. Its limited aim is to serve as a tutorial on how to cite the most widely referenced types of U.S. legal material, taking account of localnorms and the changes in citation practice forced by the shift from print to electronic sources.

Welcome to The Indigo Book—a free, Creative Commons-dedicated implementation of The Bluebook’s Uniform System of Citation. The Indigo Book was compiled by a team of students at the New York University School of Law, working under the direction of Professor Christopher Jon Sprigman. The Indigo Book isn’t the same as The Bluebook, but it does implement the same Uniform System of Citation that The Bluebook does. The scope of The Indigo Book’s coverage is roughly equivalent to The Bluebook’s “Bluepages”—that is, The Indigo Book covers legal citation for U.S. legal materials, as well as books, periodicals, and Internet and other electronic resources.

This book is an introductory survey of the legal topics required in undergraduate business law classes.

Business Law I Essentials is a brief introductory textbook designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of courses on Business Law or the Legal Environment of Business. The concepts are presented in a streamlined manner, and cover the key concepts necessary to establish a strong foundation in the subject.

This book engages students by relating law to everyday events with which they are already familiar (or with which they are familiarizing themselves in other business courses) and by its clear, concise, and readable style. This textbook provides context and essential concepts across the entire range of legal issues with which managers and business executives must grapple. The text provides the vocabulary and legal acumen necessary for businesspeople to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, government officials—and to their own lawyers.

An open textbook for undergraduate Criminal Procedure courses that are typically required of criminal justice majors. The book uses U.S. Supreme Court opinions to illuminate the definition of rights concerning search and seizure, right to counsel, and other aspects of the criminal justice process. This resource seeks to make undergraduates familiar with judicial reasoning as well as the definitions of rights relevant to individuals who are drawn into contact with criminal justice officials.

Introduction to Intellectual Property provides a clear, effective introduction to patents, copyright, trademarks, and trade secrets. The text may be used by students and instructors in formal courses, as well as those applying intellectual property considerations to entrepreneurship, marketing, law, computer science, engineering, design, or other fields. The luminaries involved with this project represent the forefront of knowledge and experience, and the material offers considerable examples and scenarios, as well as exercises and references.

This book is an introduction to intellectual property law, the set of private legal rights that allows individuals and corporations to control intangible creations and marks—from logos to novels to drug formulae—and the exceptions and limitations that define those rights. It focuses on the three graphmain forms of US federal intellectual property—trademark, copyright and patent—but many of the ideas discussed here apply far beyond those legal areas and far beyond the law of the United States.

Trademark Law: An Open-Source Casebook is a free, “open” textbook designed for a four-credit trademark course the author teaches at NYU School of Law. Model syllabi for four-credit and three-credit courses are available in the Faculty Resources section of this website.

Open Source Property: A Free Casebook is a free resource for instructors and students of the first-year Property Law course at American law schools, and anyone else with an interest in the subject.

The use of testamentary trusts is becoming an important part of estate planning. As a result, students who want to make a living as probate attorneys will need to know how trusts fit into estate planning.

First, we will study a number of traditional property topics, those where the issue of "ownership" and what that entails have long been thought to be a central issue. Second, but most importantly, our interdisciplinary study will introduce some of the major analytical techniques in law, from reasoning using precedent to law and economics to distributive justice.

Introduction to the Law of Property, Estate Planning and Insurance is an up-to-date textbook that covers legal issues that students must understand relating to real estate (an especially important business asset), as well as estate planning and insurance.