Law library
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A law library is a library designed to assist law students, attorneys, judges, and their law clerks in finding the legal resources necessary to correctly determine the state of the law.
Every American law school is required by the American Bar Association to have a law library meeting certain minimum specifications with respect to quantity and quality of materials available. Some law school libraries are kept in the same building as the general library, but many are either in the law school's building, or in a separate facility altogether. Most court buildings also have a law library; the United States Supreme Court features one of the most extensive in the world. Some of the larger law firms and corporate law departments maintain a private library for their own attorneys, but many firms in larger cities simply dispatch their attorneys to local law schools to do legal research. In some U.S. states, like California, all counties are required by state law to maintain a public law library for the benefit of the general public.
A typical law library will include in its collection a large number of works not seen in other libraries, including a full set of United States Reports, one or both of the unofficial U.S. Supreme Court reporters, the West National Reporter System, official reporters from various states, the Federal Register, volumes of American Jurisprudence, bound volumes containing issues of prominent law reviews from around the country, federal and state statutes, and a variety of treatises and practice guides. Non-American law libraries have similar collections.
In recent years, the advent of online legal research outlets such as FindLaw, Westlaw, LexisNexis, and HeinOnline has reduced the need for some types of printed volumes like reporters and statutory compilations. A number of law libraries have therefore reduced the availability of printed works that can easily be found on the Internet, and have increased their own Internet availability. On the other hand, some university law libraries retain extensive historical collections going back to the earliest English reports.
The American Association of Law Libraries is a good source of information on law librarians and law librarianship.[1]
