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You can install a free app for Chrome which allow you to look up legal citations quickly. BlueLine Fetch is available here:
After it is installed when you select a legal citation in your chrome browser you can right click and select the option for 'Blue Line Fetch Legal Citations'.
If you have the 'Quick Fetch' option selected, Blue Line will automatically open the cited case or statute, without any further action required.
The BlueLine Fetch app works with Westlaw, Lexis, and Google Scholar.
If you're working on cite checking a brief, and you come across a citation to a House or Senate Report you may run into a little trouble if the report dates from 1980 or earlier. A common citations for more recent Congressional reports, such House Report No. 107-131, will come up nice and easy, just like the cites for any legal reporter. Lexis does not have full text records for House and Senate reports in its regular database for the 96th Congress, and all earlier Congresses. (The 96th Congress dated from January 3, 1979 to January 3, 1980). You can however access scanned images of the reports by following these steps.
On the Lexis Advance home page search for, 'Congressional Documents 1777-present'
You'll access the 'Congressional Documents 1777-present (U.S. Serial Set)' database. Here you'll be able to search for pre-1981 reports using the search format, h.rp 96-1196 or s.rp 96-590
Click on the report in your search results and you'll be taken to a summary of the report. In order to access the full report, you'll need to click on the link for 'Replica of Original Proceedings' to the right.
Now you'll be taken to a scanned image of the hard copy original, which is text searchable.
Anyone who has worked in the legal field for even a short time Has learned to lookup filings in federal court cases on PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). There are individual PACER sites for all of the appellate circuit courts, federal district courts, and the federal bankruptcy courts. The link on the PACER court sites page to the Supreme Court of the United States, simply takes you to the home page of SCOTUS, not the individual CM/ECF Filer / PACER Login pages for each of the federal courts of original jurisdiction, and court of intermediate appeal.
If you look around on the SCOTUS home page, you'll see a link to 'Case Documents' at the top. Click there, and you'll get an menu with several options. The option for 'Docket Search' will take you to a page where you can look up case numbers. However you'll only get a list of filings and basic case information - you will not get links to the actual filings made with the Supreme Court.
The option you do want in the menu is for 'On- Line MERITS BRIEFS', which will lead you to the web page on the site of the American Bar Association, which posts links to individual case pages from which you can download filings with SCOTUS.
