Reference and Research Services
This guide is designed to help students working as Research Assistants (RAs) for law professors. Law Librarians are available to help you identify relevant books, articles, and electronic resources. They can also help you develop search strategies in our catalogs, databases, Internet, indexes, as well as in primary sources of law.
- Hours - The William Taylor Muse Law LibraryThe Law Library's hours change throughout the school year based on the academic schedule.
Training Powerpoint
Materials from your training this summer can be found below.
- Training SlidesInformation on the catalog, ILL, and professionalism.
Starting Your Research
Jurisdiction
Find out if you need to examine federal or state court or administrative decisions, regulatory, or legislative sources, or some combination.
Useful tips
The professor may know of expert authors, recent publications, or other materials that could help you. Get names of authors and citations to documents, if possible.
Scope
How much information does the professor want? Should your research be exhaustive, or just an overview?
Terms of art
Ask the professor for standard terms of art and their definitions. You can save time and effort if you know some of the right terminology.
Acronyms
If your professor uses acronyms that you are unfamiliar with, clarify the spelling and meaning of acronyms.
Sources
As an expert, a professor will know the titles of key journals, looseleafs, treatises, and databases in the field of research.
Key constraints
How much time should you spend on the project? Find out before you start your research.
Adapted from a handout by Ellen Callinan, Crowell & Moring, Washington, DC (1993)
Frequently Used Electronic Resources
In addition to Lexis and Westlaw, these full text databases are very useful.
- JSTORAccess to several hundred scholarly, paper journals, most beginning with the first volume—excludes most recent 3 to 5 years
- HeinOnlineContains more than 2,000 law and law-related periodicals. Coverage is from the first issue published for all periodicals and goes through the most-currently published issues allowed based on contracts with publishers. Search by article title, author, subject, state or country published, full text, and narrow by date.
INDEXES
- LegalTracAccess to citations from over 1,300 major legal publications, with coverage beginning in 1980
- Index to Legal PeriodicalsAccess to citations from over 1,025 legal
publications, including a retrospective database of 900 publications dating back to 1908
JOURNAL LOCATOR
- Journal Title & eBook LocatorUse the library’s Journal Locator to determine if the University of Richmond libraries have the resource in print or electronic access.