Navigating Legal Research: A Guide to Loyola Marymount University's Library Resources

Loyola Marymount University (LMU) offers a wealth of library resources, particularly through the William M. Rains Library, designed to support legal research for Loyola Law School (LLS) faculty, students, and staff. These resources range from comprehensive online databases to extensive physical collections, ensuring access to a wide array of materials necessary for in-depth legal study and practice. This article provides a detailed overview of the resources available, highlighting their key features and benefits.

Expanding Legal Research Options: Online Resources

The William M. Rains Library provides access to a diverse range of online resources, each tailored to specific areas of legal research. These resources are invaluable for LLS faculty, students, and staff, offering convenient and comprehensive research capabilities.

Immigration Law Research with AILALink

AILALink is a research database designed as a one-stop shop for immigration law research. It offers a comprehensive collection of resources, making it an essential tool for anyone studying or practicing immigration law.

Accessing Civil Liberties History: American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990

The American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990, are part of the Making of Modern Law collection and draw from the records of the ACLU. This resource provides invaluable insights into the history of civil liberties in the United States.

Exploring LGBTQ History: Archives of Sexuality & Gender

Archives of Sexuality & Gender presents various aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. This collection offers a rich source of information for researchers and students interested in LGBTQ history and culture.

Comprehensive Study Aids: Aspen Learning Library

The Aspen Learning Library platform contains over 200 study aids, including the Examples & Explanations series, Glannon Guides, Emanuel Law Outlines, and Crunchtime and Casenote Legal Briefs. It also includes the Bar Collection, making it an essential resource for law students preparing for exams and the bar.

Scholarly Publications: Brill

Founded in 1683, Brill is a publishing house with a rich history and a strong international focus. Brill's publications focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences, International Law, and selected areas in the Sciences, providing access to quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.

California-Specific Legal Resources: OnLaw

Access to OnLaw content covers over 150 California-specific secondary sources across 20+ practice areas. This resource offers step-by-step procedural assistance, legal practice guides, legal action guides, legal reporters, attorney-drafted forms, arbitration and contract language, and searchable primary case law with citator.

Federal Court Cases and Documents: DocketBird

DocketBird is one of the world's largest repositories of federal court cases and documents. They have millions of cases and documents in their database, including nearly every pending case.

Multidisciplinary E-Book Collection

This growing subscription package contains a large selection of multidisciplinary e-book titles representing a broad range of academic subject matter.

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Comprehensive Database Coverage: EBSCOhost

EBSCOhost provides access to Humanities, Social Science, and General Science databases, including full-text from Business News, Education, History, Legal, and Psychology publications.

Economic Research: EconLit with Full Text

EconLit with Full Text is the most reliable full-text database for economic research, offering full-text journals, including the American Economic Association journals with no embargo. Content includes 501 active full-text journals and magazines, 492 active full-text, peer-reviewed journals, 248 active full-text, peer-reviewed journals with no embargo, and 392 active full-text journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus.

Access to E-Books: Elgar Online

The Elgar online content platform provides browsable and searchable access to Edward Elgar Publishing's e-books online.

Legal History: HeinOnline

The world’s largest image-based legal research collection with more than 100 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format.

Case Law from England and Wales: ICLR

The online platform includes ICLR's Law Reports and Weekly Law Reports covering case law from the Superior and Appellate Courts in England and Wales.

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International Case Law Translations

Expert English translations of case law from over 65 jurisdictions.

Legal News and Analysis: Law.com

Law.com is the premiere source for trusted and timely legal news and analysis. Publications include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal, The New York Law Journal, and The Recorder.

Daily Legal Coverage: Law360

Law360 provides daily coverage of the emerging litigation, policy developments, and legal trends you need to know about to stay ahead.

Legal Forms and Publications: LexisNexis

More than 310 full-text publications and thousands of legal forms.

In-Depth Legal Insights: LegalTrac

The authoritative source for current issues, studies, thoughts, and trends of the legal world, offering more than 1,100 full-text journals. It provides detailed indexing for legal journals, law reviews, yearbooks, institutes, statutes, bar association publications, and university publications, including more than 300 law reviews.

News and Multimedia: NYTimes.com

NYTimes.com is a multi-platform news tool that provides full access to New York Times and International New York Times content, including breaking news, multimedia, reviews and opinion, blogs, videos, and more. NYTimes.com is updated 24/7 with corresponding time stamps, offering access to more than 25 Times sections, including World, Politics, New York, Opinion, Business, Technology, Science, Sports, Arts, Fashion & Style, and Video.

Legal Information for Consumers and Small Businesses: Nolo

The nation's oldest and most-respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses.

Academic Research: Oxford Academic

Oxford Academic is Oxford University Press’s (OUP) academic research platform, providing access to over 50,000 books and 500 journals. Oxford Academic serves the diverse and changing research needs of students, researchers, professors, and practitioners.

Comprehensive Handbooks: Oxford Handbooks Online

Oxford Handbooks Online is an outstanding collection of the best Handbooks areas across many different subject areas.

Comparative Legal Systems: Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History

Provides both historical and contemporary comparisons of the world legal systems, covering legal history from ancient to modern times.

Legal Perspectives: Oxford Law Pro

Oxford Law Pro, part of Oxford University Press, houses a definitive and diverse collection of critical perspectives from leading lawyers, arbitrators, and scholars, covering all essential aspects of the field. LLS provides subscription access to the topics International Organizations and Arbitration.

Public International Case Law: Oxford Reports on International Law

Current coverage of public international case law, reporting on international courts, domestic courts, and ad hoc tribunals.

Extensive Book Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Over 3,000 carefully-selected Oxford books with full-text access to the Law module.

Legislative and Regulatory Analysis: ProQuest Legislative Insight and Regulatory Insight

Companion to Legislative Insight. Regulatory Insight takes you to the next stage after a law has been passed.

Supreme Court Case Analysis: Supreme Court Insight

Supreme Court Insight is a complete online collection of full opinions from Supreme Court argued cases, including per decision, dockets, oral arguments, joint appendices, and amicus briefs. Content associated with each case is compiled on a dynamic page organized to facilitate understanding of the judicial process and is also retrievable on a document by document basis.

Research Paper Database: SSRN

Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 153,600 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers; Electronic Paper Collection containing over 121,500 downloadable full text documents in PDF format.

Policy Research: Trends & Policy

Trends & Policy is a series of in-depth primary source collections to support research and learning on policy related to today’s most pressing issues. Government with the data-driven results and trends of those policies and provides context with analytical reports and news articles.

Academic Books: University Press Scholarship Online

Access thousands of academic books across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law.

Legal Expertise and Analysis: VitalLaw

VitalLaw provides access to in-depth knowledge and expertise from WK attorney specialists and experts including deep, rich, analytical content and explanations; curated primary source (laws, regulations, and cases) with history lines and notes; a variety of CCH and Aspen Publishers titles; practical tools, news, webinars, white papers, and blogs. Practice areas include Antitrust & Competition, Banking & Consumer Finance, Bankruptcy, Cybersecurity and Privacy, Government Contracts, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Labor and Employment Law, Litigation, Products Liability & Insurance, Securities and Tax.

Global Legal Content: vLex

Case law, legislation, books & magazines, forms & contracts, news and other legal content from over 140 countries.

Law School Study Aids: West Academic Study Aids Digital Collection

The West Academic Study Aids Digital Collection offers you unlimited digital access to hundreds of study aids covering virtually every law school subject. You’ll have comprehensive coverage authored by noted law professors, exceptional mobility, 24/7 digital access, easy searching, professional-quality audio and video, and economical plan options.

California and Federal Law Resources: Westlaw

Various legal e-books and looseleafs on California and Federal Law, such as the Rutter Group California Practice Guides, Federal law and practice.

Accessing Resources Off-Campus

If you're accessing these resources off-campus, you will automatically be re-routed through the proxy link to log in. You will only be required to login once using your LLS credentials.

Additional Resources

Many more databases, indexes, and other research tools covering a wide variety of topics are available via LMU's Hannon Library. Law School faculty, students, and staff may also use LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law. See Westlaw/Lexis/Bloomberg quick links page.

Expanding Search Capabilities: LINK+ and ILLiad

LINK+ is a catalog of over 60 academic and public libraries in California and Nevada. Current LMU students, staff, and faculty can request books from LINK+ libraries online. The books are delivered to LMU at no charge to you. Books arrive in 3 business days and are held at the Circulation counter for 10 days.

Create an ILLiad account and fill out the book request form to have books that are unavailable at LMU or in LINK+ delivered from another library. *Please note it can take up to three weeks for a book requested through ILLiad to arrive at LMU. Due dates are set by the lending library and can vary.

Global Library Resources: WorldCat

Search for books at more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. Most of these books are out of copyright - which means they are older and might count more as primary sources than secondary sources.

Digital Preservation: HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository.

Building a Digital Library: Internet Archive

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.

Archival Collections from Adam Matthew Digital

Subjects: MANYDescription: Archival collection from Adam Matthew Digital containing the collection of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Subjects: MANYDescription: Primary source collection from Adam Matthew Digital covering three centuries of Caribbean history.

Subjects: MANYDescription: Primary source collection from Adam Matthew Digital containing full access to the diaries, journals, and correspondence of Edward S.

Research Database from Bloomsbury

Subjects: Philosophy, TheologyDescription: Research database from Bloomsbury containing full text.

Streaming Video Collection from SAGE

Subjects: MANYDescription: Streaming video collection from SAGE containing self-paced online courses in research methods.

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