Lawyers for Racial Justice Report Review Project - Instructions

Project Overview:

Over the past several years, Lawyers for Good Government published the following reports in partnership with our pro bono volunteers and nonprofit partners. These reports are publicly available on the L4GG website, and are utilized as resources by nonprofits and legal advocates nationwide:

Through this project, attorneys will review the laws listed in the appendices in the reports to confirm whether these laws are still up to date and operative and provide updates where it is needed. Participating attorneys will also search for any recent news articles that will provide further context on how these laws are being applied.

Tools:

When conducting this research, we request your assistance to ensure that the law is accurate, up-to-date, and based on all applicable state law – all relevant statutes, any relevant regulations implementing that statute, and any relevant caselaw that might affect the meaning of the statute.  We also separately request public versions of these laws, regulations, and cases so that readers of our reports (advocates, legislators, and the public) may freely and easily access the sources we cite. Please use the tools we describe below:

  • Your Westlaw or Lexis Account.  We request that you do all research in your Westlaw or Lexis Account.  These are the most accurate and up-to-date, and importantly include references to the relevant case law and often regulations.

  • Casetext.com.  Upon review of all the free services, this is our preferred publicly available resource of the state codes of each jurisdiction, so that advocates, legislators, and the public can quickly view the state code without hitting a Westlaw or Lexis paywall.  Please provide a hyperlink citation to casetext.com for each statute cited unless it is, for some reason, unavailable.  A simple Google search with the relevant statutory provision and casetext.com, nearly always returns the relevant code provision.  

  • Justia. This is another publicly available resource of the state codes of each jurisdiction. It is often a year out of date in comparison to Casetext.com, but includes something Casetext.com does not include, previous versions of state codes by year.  If for some reason a statute is not available at casetext.com, or if you need to cite to a historical version of a state statute, please provide a Justia.com hyperlink citation to the most recent version of the statute or the relevant historical version of the statute as appropriate.

    • For instance, if you needed to demonstrate that a version of Maryland Education Code § 7–306 that was used in a 2017 case, but the code provision had since been amended in 2018, please provide us with Md. Code, Educ. § 7-306 (2017) via Justia.

  • Cornell Legal Information Institute.  This is a publicly available resource of state regulations, maintained by Cornell Law School.

  • Google Scholar.  This is a publicly available resource of case law.  While it is developed and maintained by Google, it is separate from a standard Google search and must be conducted from scholar.google.com, and then clicking on the “case law” button.

  • Google Chrome Web Browser (optional).  We understand that not all firms are able to use the Google Chrome Web Browser, but if you can, we do request that you use it. Google Chrome has a feature where if you right click on text in a webpage (not a PDF) you can see an option “copy link to highlight” and when someone clicks that link in the future, they are brought to the exact text you highlighted, what we call a hyperlink pinsite, which allows readers to see exactly what the researcher intended in large documents.

    • For instance, if opened in the Google Chrome web browser (or some other web browsers) the following link to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954) highlights text on page 493 that reads “Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” You can see an example of how to do this in the screenshot below:

Google News. You can use Google news to search for recent news articles related to your assigned topic in your state.

Instructions for Participating Attorneys:

Questions? Email probono@L4GG.org.

  1. Pull up your assigned report and review the appendix portion for your assigned state.

    You can access your assigned report here:

    • Child Farmworkers

      • Pull up the pdf of the report. Appendix starts on page 32.

      • Most recent update: October 2021

    • Ballot Selfies/Election Day PTO

      • Scroll to the “State Level Findings” at the bottom of the page and click on your assigned state.

      • Most recent update (Ballot Selfies): November 2021

      • Most recent update (Election Day PTO): November 2021

    • Trans Healthcare

      • Scroll to the “State Level Findings” at the bottom of the page and click on your assigned state.

      • Most recent update: June 2023

    • Corporal Punishment in Public Schools 

      • Pull up the pdf of the report. Appendix starts on page 20.

      • Most recent update: April 2023

  2. Conduct legal research to determine whether the answer(s) in the appendix for your assigned state are still accurate.

    Please remember that changes can come from many sources, and verify that your research encompasses all of those sources, including: 

    • Changes to existing legislation

    • Promulgation of new legislation

    • Procedural progress in litigation/new rulings or orders 

    • New rule-making 

    • Newly announced orders

    • Constitutional amendments or interpretations

    • Any other relevant legal authority of which you think we should be aware

  3. Draft an updated appendix portion for your state (if there are changes).

    We recommend that during this process, you initially gather your findings in a Word or Google document. As you draft your updated research submission, make sure:

    • The submission follows the instructions in the Tools section above.

    • Any citations with links are included throughout the body of the text, not as footnotes.

    • Any statute links are from Casetext.com. (See Tools section above.)

4. Fill out and submit your findings using this form.

Please do not begin this step until you have completed Steps 1, 2, and 3 above. PLEASE NOTE: THE FORM MUST BE COMPLETED EVEN IF THERE ARE NO CHANGES TO REPORT.

In the form, you will be asked the following questions:

  1. Report. Please select your assigned report from the drop down menu.

  2. State/Territory. Please select your assigned state/territory from the drop down menu.

  3. Is the appendix portion for your assigned state still fully up-to-date and accurate? If the appendix portion for your assigned state is not up to date and accurate, please provide your proposed update.

  4. Relevant news articles. Please provide any relevant news articles you can find related to your assigned topic and state since the report was last updated (See dates of most recent update in Step 1 above.)

Questions? Email probono@L4GG.org.

Once you have completed your research, please submit your responses (with citations/links) using this online form. Thank you for contributing to this important project.