If you're looking for full text law articles, know where you need to go to find them

If you have a need for current articles on law, you should know what the best resources are to find full text versions.

I recommend: Westlaw and Lexis are the gold standard for legal research, and both offer access to all important law reviews and journals, as well as to many books of law, but for a price. Both have credit card options if the user is not a current subscriber. Loislaw.com is a cheaper, if less comprehensive, alternative to Westlaw and Lexis. For free access to a journal of law, one of the best sites is FindLaw, which offers a way to do a search of the law reviews and journals available for free on the internet, and also a listing of law reviews and journals that offer free full text articles from their recent publications.

For books, going to the publishers websites is best

Although you can get legal books from places such as Amazon, publisher sites often give you the best deals on law books, in addition to being more comprehensive.

I recommend: The biggest publisher of books on law in the United States is currently West, currently owned by Thomson Reuters. It offers a comprehensive store that features a large number of books on almost every legal subject. Outside of West, the biggest legal publisher is Matthew Bender, which also offers a bookstore. It should be noted that West owns Westlaw and Matthew Bender is owned by Lexis. There are also other online bookstores such as LawBooks.com that offer a good selection.

If you need more historical legal publications, you can find them

If your research requires access to older books on law or articles on law, there are several good websites.

I recommend: HeinOnline offers an amazing list of older law journals, as well as older books of law. It's subscription only, but the subscription is not terribly expensive. If you're interested in holding an older law book in hand rather than reading it online, The Lawbook Exchange offers a collection of older books on law as well as court books and other rarer publications.