Orientation to the Library for 1L Students
Legal Databases Beyond Lexis+ and Westlaw
All Legal Databases
An A-Z list, searchable by subject.
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General Legal Databases | Law Review and Journal Articles | Foreign and International | Historical
General Legal Databases
- Fastcase and Loislaw Treatise Library This link opens in a new windowFastcase is a low-cost alternative to databases like Lexis or Westlaw. It includes primary law materials as well as treatises and practice guides. Many practicing lawyers get Fastcase access for free as a benefit of membership in a state or local bar association. It is a benefit of Pennsylvania Bar Association membership.
- VitalLaw (formerly CCH Cheetah)This resource is particularly good for highly-regulated areas of law such as tax, securities, health law, and employment law. Some primary law materials are provided, but the strength of the collection is in the practice guides, news, and smart charts.
- Hein OnlineHeinOnline is known for providing access to law reviews and historical documents. All documents are provided in a searchable PDF format.
Law Review and Journal Articles
- Hein OnlineHeinOnline provides access to over 2800 law and law-related periodicals as well as other legal materials. Journal holdings typically begin from a journal's inception. HeinOnline can be a good resource to check if you are unable to find older materials in Lexis+ or Westlaw.
- LegalTrac (Info Trac)LegalTrac indexes all major law reviews, legal newspapers, specialty law publications, bar association journals, and thousands of law-related articles from general interest publications. Some full text is available.
- Law Commons This link opens in a new windowA collection of law review articles and some working papers. There are over half a million full-text articles in this collection that have been contributed by over 400 institutions.
- Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) This link opens in a new windowThis is part of SSRN, a place where professors often post pre-publication drafts of law review articles. You can run a general search in the search box at the top of the screen. You might need to create a free account to download a paper.
Foreign and International Materials
- Foreign Law Guide: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World This link opens in a new window
Provides brief introductory information on the legal systems of 160 nations or jurisdictions, combined with a list of all codes and basic laws, where they can be found in their most current format in the official language and any English translations, if available.
- Hein Online : Foreign & International Law Resources Database This link opens in a new window
Contains the full text of many international law yearbooks and journals. It also contains U.S. international law practice digests, publications from international courts and tribunals, and other materials related to international and foreign law. The collection may be browsed or searched.
- Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (HeinOnline)
The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) database indexes articles as well as book reviews from more than 490 legal journals published worldwide, including journals, essay collections, festschrifts, and congress reports.
Historical Legal Resources
- Hein Online
Provides the full text of over 200 legal journals from their inception; includes databases for U.S. agency, Congressional, Presidential, Supreme Court and foreign relations documents, reports and texts. The collections may be browsed or searched and results can be viewed in PDF.
- LLMC DigitalProvides full-text access to a vast collection of legal literature and government documents courtesy of the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC). The current online collection consists primarily of U.S. federal executive, legislative, and judicial materials.
- Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926 This link opens in a new windowThis database includes foreign legal treatises from a variety of countries; comparative works that includes Ancient, Roman, Jewish, and Islamic law; and works of the great legal theorists. Materials in the database are from Yale Law Library, George Washington University Law Library and the Columbia Law Library.
- Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources I & II This link opens in a new windowThis collection consists of historical legal codes, statutes, regulations, and commentaries on codes from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other countries in northern Europe. Included are crucial sources of historical statutes and regulations for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Foreign Primary Sources, 1600-1970 complements the collection of treatises found in Foreign, Comparative and International Law 1600-1926.
- Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 This link opens in a new windowA fully searchable collection of 19th and 20th century Anglo-American legal treatises. It allows full-text searching of more than 21,000 works including casebooks, local practice materials, form books, manuals, letters, speeches, and more.
- Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources I & II This link opens in a new windowThe Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1970, is a fully searchable digital archive of the published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests and more. Designed to complement The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, this archive offers online access to state and municipal codes, documents relating to constitutional conventions, and other resources in American legal history.
- Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926 This link opens in a new windowA collection of more than 7,000 titles derived from the Law Libraries of Harvard, Yale and the Library of the Bar of the City of New York. The fully searchable content contains trial books from all countries and languages, but most books are in English and published in the U.S. or Great Britain. Books include unofficially published accounts of trials; official trial documents, briefs and arguments; and official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations.
- Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 This link opens in a new windowA fully searchable collection of briefs and other documents related to cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court. It contains over 150,000 cases and 350,000 documents. Types of records include appellant and appellee briefs, amicus briefs, petitions, trial transcripts, and more. Search results are linked to the actual full-text PDF documents.
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