An essential guide to legal research and the self-help legal literature for laypersons and students. Provides overviews of 85 legal specialties with sources of law applicable to each specialty, web sites for further research and content-rich reviews of nearly 800 significant subject-specialty texts geared to a lay or student audience. Fills a void in the collection of any law, public or academic library which fields legal questions. Introductory chapters examine the nature of self-help law versus hiring an attorney, provide a roadmap to legal information, an overview of the U.S. justice system, and reviews of general works on U.S. law. Appendices include a title index, bibliography of state legal research guides, and a directory of public law libraries in the United States.