One of our great joys as law librarians is seeing the incredible research and writing that is produced by the faculty and students of this wonderful institution. We love it so much that each year we host an Award for Exemplary Student Research.

To win this award, you do not need to produce “new” research – only provide a short write-up of research that you have done in the last year.

First Place: $500

Second Place: $250

Details can be found on the award website, including submission instructions. You still have time to put something together this weekend…
Continue Reading Last Call: Law Library Research Contest

Academic libraries play a vital role in supporting faculty and students by providing access to academic resources that can enhance research and instruction. One of the database providers that we subscribe to is Gale, owned by Cengage, which offers a variety of databases to support these efforts.

ASU Law Has Five Law-Specific Databases on Gale

Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926

Provides legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926 with full-text searching.

Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources

Consists of a fully searchable digital archive of early state codes, constitutional conventions, municipal codes, legal…
Continue Reading Database Spotlight: Gale

Have you ever noticed small bells, envelopes, or concentric semicircular lines when performing legal research? Those symbols can help you make sure that you’re up to date, and our new library guide, Keeping Current, makes it even easier to navigate the many ways databases and websites help you track developments.

The law is not a static creature, quietly collecting dust like an ancient tome on a shelf. It’s a hyperdynamic beast constantly reinventing itself as judges rule, lawmakers legislate, and scholars publish.

The Keeping Current guide provides instructions, including video tutorials (also at the bottom of this blog post),…
Continue Reading Keeping Current: Staying Updated Across Many Platforms and Services

Citation managers are software programs that help scholars, researchers, and students keep track of their sources and organize their citations. They are particularly useful for academics, lawyers and students who need to cite a large number of sources in a consistent and accurate way.

Citation Managers and the Bluebook

One of the main challenges with citation managers is that they do not work well with The Bluebook citation style, which is commonly used in law schools. This style is known for its complex rules and formatting requirements, and many citation managers are not equipped to handle it. This can make…
Continue Reading Writing a Large Paper?  Consider a Citation Manager

Lawyers and librarians alike have a way with words, spending much of their time with books and internet databases, reading, researching, and writing. But we also must step up and let our voices be heard. Whether law students are undergoing the first-year rite of passage of delivering oral arguments in their finest legal attire or honing their presentations for a moot court championship, the librarians can help budding public speakers maximize their persuasiveness.

Students preparing for the Legal Advocacy argument should check out the Law Library’s First Year Legal Writing page. This research guide points to useful resources for modeling…
Continue Reading Resources Enhance Oral Advocacy

The Ross-Blakley Law Library Award for Exemplary Student Research is not just any writing competition. As research experts, the librarians are looking for the best examples of effective gathering and synthesis of resources, in print or online.

Current Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law 2Ls, 3Ls, MLS students, and LLM students are eligible to submit their entries. The top prize is $500 and second place receives $250.

Students must submit a minimum 3,750-word scholarly paper with citations in Bluebook format, written June 2022-March 2023. Entries must not be prepared for moot court, employment, or an Advanced Legal Research course, but they may…
Continue Reading Hit the Books (and Databases) to Win Law Library Award for Exemplary Student Research

The Ross-Blakley Law Library subscribes to two tax law databases that are specifically designed for tax attorneys to do their work.  A full overview of our tax law resources can be found in our Tax Law Libguide.

VitalLaw (Formerly CCH Cheetah) by Wolters Kluwer

History

VitalLaw is a tool used by law firms and in-house counsel focused on tax, accounting, and regulatory compliance.  The service (in recent history) started as Intelliconnect.  After years of providing this singular platform, Wolters Kluwer discovered that accountants (at the Big 3 like PWC and Deloitte) were using the service in a very different…
Continue Reading Database Spotlight: Tax Law-Specific Databases

The Ross-Blakley Law Library subscribes to many different resources that provide users with access to court dockets.  Westlaw has dockets available and Lexis provides CourtLink, but the most complete docket coverage is provided by Bloomberg Law.

Why Bloomberg?

Both Lexis and Westlaw academic account users are limited in the way that they can access docket information.  Law school users only have access to pleadings and filings that have been pulled into the system by other users. You may not request new documents.

That’s where Bloomberg Law (“BLaw”) comes in: as an ASU academic account user, you have the…
Continue Reading Using Bloomberg Law to Get Access to Dockets: Complaints, Pleadings, Orders, and More

Being a member of the Arizona State University community confers many benefits.  One of them is the vast quantity of paywalled databases and subscriptions you receive as part of your membership.

Whether you are doing historical research or simply looking to stay informed, here is a list of the many, phenomenal resources that are available with your ASURITE credentials.

Remember that nearly all of these services allow you to subscribe so that you can have topic-specific results delivered directly to your email inbox.  The law library has created a YouTube playlist to show you how to set up alerts on…
Continue Reading All the News You Can Read at ASU Law

You may have seen this logo when you logged into Supreme Court Insight or even when you’re doing interdisciplinary research on medical abstracts in MEDLINE. You will know you’re in a ProQuest database because you will see some variation of this at the top of the page:

Below I’m going to highlight some unique features that work across all ProQuest databases so that you can use them effectively, whether you’re researching American Indians and the American West, Sports Medicine, or Historical Black Newspapers.

The first tip is that some ProQuest databases are interoperable. For example, if you…
Continue Reading Database Spotlight: ProQuest Databases

Westlaw is providing an exciting update to your law school account on Wednesday, 01/11/23: Westlaw Precision.

Westlaw Precision is an update to Westlaw Edge.  Your account will automatically convert to this update and you do not need to do anything.  The update will include a new interface and new features.  The underlying content of the subscription (secondary sources, primary law, news) will remain the same.

Brief History of Updates

Westlaw’s research database has experienced several updates in the last 20 years:

• Westlaw
• Westlaw Next (2010)
• Westlaw Edge (2018)
• Westlaw Precision (2023)

With each update comes a new interface and…
Continue Reading Introducing Westlaw Precision to ASU Law