College of Law students can make an individual appointment with a librarian for one-on-one research assistance.
To make an appointment, submit the online appointment request form. A librarian will contact you to set up an appointment. Appointments typically last 30 minutes.
The librarians at the Ross-Blakley Law Library have created a multitude of research guides. You can access them here:
Aspen Learning Library (formerly Wolters Kluwer)
Provides unlimited online access to hundreds of titles aimed at the law student. Some series that are available include: Examples & Explanations, Emanuel Law Outlines, Glannon Guides, and much more.
West Academic Study Aids
Provides unlimited access to over 500 study aids aimed at the law student. Case studies, hornbooks, exam outlines and audio lectures are included.
Westlaw
Westlaw is an online legal research service. Information resources on Westlaw include databases of case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms, and other information resources. Most legal documents on Westlaw are indexed to the West Key Number System, which is West's master classification system of U.S. law. Westlaw supports natural language and Boolean searches. Other significant Westlaw features include KeyCite, a citation checking service, which can be used to determine whether cases or statutes are still good law. Access is limited to SDOC Law School faculty, staff, and students. Individual password required. Study aids are not available on Westlaw. Study aids are available on West Academic Study Aids. Please see the entry above this entry.
Lexis
Lexis is a legal research database designed for law school students and faculty. It includes cases, statutes, and regulations from federal and state jurisdictions, selected legal materials from foreign jurisdictions, and extensive secondary materials such as treatises and law journal articles. Access is limited to SDOC Law School faculty, staff, and students. Individual password required.
Bloomberg Law
Database of legal news, company profiles, case law, legal treatises, and docket information. Also includes SEC filings, model forms and contracts. Access is limited to SDOC Law School faculty, staff, and students. Individual password required.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. Includes access to Shepard’s.
ProQuest Congressional
ProQuest Congressional consists of the CIS Index, Congressional Indexes, 1789-1969, and selected full text Congressional publications. CIS Index abstracts US Congressional publications from 1970 to the present. The publications include Bills, Hearings, Committee Prints, House and Senate Reports, House and Senate Documents, Senate Treaty Documents, Senate Executive Reports, and the Congressional Record. It also includes unpublished hearings, those hearings not released by a committee due to their classified or sensitive nature, budget or workload considerations, or deemed to be of not great interest to the public at large. Most publications are available in PDF format.
ProQuest Legislative Insight
Provides links to all of the documents created by Congress during the process leading up to the enactment of U.S. Public Laws. Documents include the full text of the Public Law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, and prints. Also included are Presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications that provide background material to aid in the understanding of issues related to the making of the law. When all content has been added, this resource will provide legislative histories for Public Laws from 1929-present.
ProQuest Regulatory Insight
Regulatory Insight contains administrative law histories organized by public law, and provides functionality similar to the functionality found in Legislative Insight, to facilitate research.
Indian Claims Insight
Includes: Pre-1948: claims presented to Congress and/or brought before the Court of Claims; 1948-1978: Indian Claims Commission, including briefs, docket books, decisions, expert testimony, oral transcripts; Post-1978: Claims brought before the US Court of Claims (through 1982) and US Court of Federal Claims (through 2006); documents related to post-2006 settlement of claims; legislative histories and congressional publications directly related to Indian claims, including congressional publications indexed by docket numbers; important Supreme Court decisions; and maps.
Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs, 1832-1978
Contains the records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court from 1832 to 1978. The collection is derived from two reference sources. For 1832 through 1915, the documents are based primarily on the holdings of the Jenkins Memorial Law Library in Philadelphia. For 1915 to 1978, the source is the Library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
ProQuest Supreme Court Insight
Complete online collection of full opinions from Supreme Court argued cases, including decisions, dockets, oral arguments, joint appendices and amicus briefs. Coverage begins in 1975.
Checkpoint Tax (RIA)
Collection of full-text primary and secondary tax research materials. Contains tax documents and secondary analysis for the areas of federal, state and local, estate planning, pensions and benefits, international and payroll taxation.
VitalLaw (Wolters Kluwer)
Full text of popular treatises in the areas of bankruptcy, business, employment, health care, securities, and tax law. This product replaces CCH Intelliconnect
HeinOnline
Provides access to the full text of hundreds of law reviews, bar journals, federal primary materials, including the Congressional Record, U.S. Code, Federal Register, CFR, and state sessions laws.
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP)
Multilingual index to articles & book reviews published worldwide. Covers international (public & private), comparative & municipal law of countries other than the United States, the U.K., Canada & Australia. Coverage from 1984-present, updated quarterly.
Kluwer Arbitration
Kluwer Arbitration provides resources for international arbitration research. It contains commentary from expert authors and an extensive collection of primary source materials. Access to materials including ICC cases and awards is provided.
Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926
Consists of Law, Islamic Law, Jewish Law, and Ancient Law sourced from the collections of the Yale, George Washington University, and Columbia law libraries.
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 dictionaries, and published records of the American colonies designed to complement Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926. The archive has two parts: Part I, 1620-1926, containing material sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University with some from the Law Library of Congress and Part II, 1763-1979, containing material sourced from the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law now has access to Power Notes Plus – a powerful browser extension that allows you to gather and organize your research.
PowerNotes is a tool to help you save, annotate, and organize sources you access from databases and the internet. To use PowerNotes, you simply highlight text in your browser. Then you can save that text, create notes, generate a citation, and (later) organize your references into an outline. Your outlines can be exported to MS Word, Google Docs, Excel, or Google Sheets.
PowerNotes works with Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, Bloomberg, and many other popular legal databases.
How to install PowerNotes:
Short Guide
5-Step Detailed Guide
(on the PowerNotes website)
Advanced Features
(on the PowerNotes website)
Q: Does it generate Bluebook and/or ALWD citations?
A: For the most part, yes. However, you must double-check your citations. PowerNotes takes citations from Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, and Bloomberg and copies them into your PowerNotes interface. It will also auto-populate fields in PowerNotes to help you with generating manual Bluebook citations. PowerNotes does a good job of this but it is not 100% accurate.
Q: Can I export my notes and outlines from PowerNotes?
A: Yes, you can easily export to a .docx file or a .xlsx file so that you can open your notes in MS Word, Google Docs, MS Excel, or Google Sheets.
Q: Does this work with Macs?
A: Yes, it works with PC, Mac, and Chromebook. It is a browser extension that works within your Chrome or Firefox browser.
Q: Can I use PowerNotes on .PDF’s on my computer?
A: Yes, you simply use your Chrome or Firefox browser to open the .PDF and then you can use PowerNotes to manipulate the text the same as any webpage. You can just drag-and-drop the .PDF into your browser window.
Q: What about pictures and diagrams?
A: Yes, PowerNotes will allow you to save pictures and organize them within your outline. If you cannot right-click and save the picture, you can simply use the “take screenshot” feature (pictured below) to capture a portion of a web page and save it in your outline.
