PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

• Jurisdiction: Oregon

Preface and Acknowledgments

As with earlier editions, the primary audience for this third edition of Oregon Legal Research is the law student, paralegal, or layperson who is learning the sources and processes for conducting research in Oregon law. I hope that experienced researchers and librarians find this edition a helpful reference to Oregon legal resources and current research techniques.

This edition reflects recent changes in legal research. The premier online providers of legal research are now Lexis Advance and Thomson Reuters West-law,¹ but high quality legal material is more widely available for free now than in the past. While books still have an important place in legal research, many traditional tools have been replaced by online counterparts. Due in large part to the changes brought by premier online providers, this third edition of Oregon Legal Research has moved from a very linear research process to a much more fluid one. A new Chapter 10 demonstrates this fluidity.

Another change is that this edition primarily uses Oregon citation form, as explained in the Oregon Appellate Courts Style Manual, because that is the form researchers are likely to encounter in Oregon legal documents and resources. There are subtle differences between the state's citation style and the national citation format of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation and the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation. Oregon style uses shorter abbreviations for state sources (e.g., abbreviating the state's statutory code as "ORS" rather than "Or. Rev. Stat.") and deletes periods in reporters (e.g., abbreviating Oregon Reports as "Or" not "Or.") and other abbreviations (e.g., "edition" is abbreviated "ed" without a period).

Each book I have written has been supported by an army of colleagues and research assistants. For this third edition, Elizabeth Ruiz Frost, Stephanie Midkiff, and Angus Nesbit read chapters and offered invaluable corrections and improvements. Megan McCombs Hays (Lexis) and Jessica Greathouse (West-law) responded to countless questions on minute details of their ever-changing products. I am grateful for the contributions of Jaye Barlous, Ryan Hall, Kyung Duk Ko, Lindsay Massara, Lauren Russell, Alice LaViolette, Jerry Curry, Layne Sawyer, and Elayna Zammarelli. Nicole...