Wisconsin State Law Library

The Wisconsin State Law Library, Milwaukee Legal Resource Center, and Dane County Legal Resource Center will be closed on Tuesday, December 31st and Wednesday, January 1st for state holidays. We will respond to questions and requests on Thursday, January 2nd.

To submit a question to the Wisconsin State Law Library while we are closed, you may call us at 608-267-9696 or Ask a Librarian online.

A recent release from the US Government Printing Office reported that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the most accessed item in the history of their digital document system, FDSys.

By KVDP (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

According to their release:

The health care law has experienced approximately 13 million retrievals since the law was passed in March 2010 and nearly 9 million retrievals in the year 2013. GPO launched FDsys in January 2009 to serve as a one-stop site to authentic, published Government information. Today, FDsys has 900 thousand titles available and has experienced nearly 900 million total retrievals.

The library has added several new titles on the Affordable Care Act and health care law to our collection, including Health care reform : now what? and Church and governmental plans.

The Wisconsin State Law Library, Milwaukee Legal Resource Center, and Dane County Legal Resource Center will be closed on Tuesday, December 24th and Wednesday, December 25th for state holidays. We will respond to questions and requests on Thursday, December 26th.

To submit a question to the Wisconsin State Law Library while we are closed, you may call us at 608-267-9696 or Ask a Librarian online.

Most often attorneys communicate professional legal advice through in person or telephone conversations with clients. Sometimes however, an attorney is requested to provide legal advice in a formal written legal opinion. A good place to start for guidance on drafting such an opinion letter is Legal Opinion Letters: A Comprehensive Guide to Opinion Letter Practice. Edited by Attorney M. John Sterba, Jr. and updated annually, this one volume loose-leaf treatise, published by Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, covers virtually all substantive areas of legal opinion practice.

The first two chapters includes an introduction to written opinions and elements to include in a typical opinion letter. Following chapters detail the drafting of legal opinion letters in areas of law such as corporate, commercial and banking transactions, real estate transactions, securities law, tax, intellectual property, bankruptcy and lien opinions, as well as attorneys' letters to auditors.

Sixteen appendices are included, many of which detail various reports issued by the New York TriBar Opinion Committee as related to drafting and issuing opinion letters. Sample opinion letters are also featured in several chapters on the topics listed above.

Search Hint: To find other library sources on opinion letter practice in other areas of the library we suggest a catalog search for the subject heading: Legal Opinion.