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General Public

General Public

The Wake Forest University Law Library, as a government depository, is open to the general public. The library is open to the public on weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm. Please call the Library to confirm hours prior to visiting. Use by members of the public is limited to the U.S. Government Documents, as part of our responsibilities as a selective U.S. Federal Depository library. Unfortunately, no materials in the government documents collection circulate.  All use of library materials is on-site.   Upon visiting the library, any person may be asked to show proper identification in order to use library materials.

A helpful resource may be the “How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers” produced by AALL. This guide is intended to help a person with a legal problem find legal rules that can resolve or prevent conflict. It is most useful to work through the steps and sources in the order given.

Legal Assistance

Unfortunately, the library staff is not available for legal advice. If you are seeking legal assistance, please contact the North Carolina Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service. For referrals online, please explore NC Find-a-Lawyer.

Additionally, you might consider reaching out to North Carolina’s Legal Aid Offices. Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) is committed to equal justice for all people.  This organization helps children, families, individuals, and migrant workers solve problems that affect their basic needs, such as housing, safety from domestic violence or abuse, health care, subsistence income, environmental safety, and consumer loan problems. For more information, visit their homepage, which is available in English and Spanish.

ResearchGuides

There are quite a few free legal information options available that you may wish to review before visiting campus.  The librarians have also created multiple ResearchGuides that you may find helpful in your research that range in topics from North Carolina Legal Research to Art Law to Intellectual Property Resources. Additionally, the library has over one hundred and eighty Advanced Legal Research pathfinders that are created by upper-level law students (updated annually) that are freely available to alumni and practicing attorneys.

Free Legal Information Sites

The librarians and library staff have compiled General Reference Sites for easy access to general legal information.

Researching at the State Level – North Carolina

If you are interested in conducting North Carolina legal research, you may want to review the materials in our ResearchGuide on North Carolina Legal Research.  And below are a few quick links to North Carolina legal information:

Executive Branch

Judicial Branch

Legislative Branch

Local Law

Additional Useful Sites

Researching at the State Level – Outside of North Carolina

If your legal question involves researching materials outside of North Carolina, you may want to refer to the following legal information websites.

Researching at the Federal Level

There is an ocean of information available to the researcher published by and about the United States Federal Government. This list of links is designed to get the research to the major resources.

  • USA.gov– Government Made Easy
  • Law Library of Congress – “The Nation’s law library”
  • Gov Info– “Public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government”

For more specific information relating to the three branches of government, select one of the following links:

The Judiciary Branch Links

The Legislative Branch Links

The Executive Branch Links