First Year Legal Research Resources

Legal Research and Writing Tools

Understand the Sources of Law

• Sources of Law: Cases, Statutes, and Regulations (iTunes podcast)
• Case Reporters (iTunes podcast)

Find the Law

• How to use a Digest in Print
• Unpublished Decisions (iTunes podcast)
• Using the West Key Number System on Westlaw (vidcast)
• "More Like This Headnote" on Lexis (vidcast)
• Free California Case Law Online (vidcast)

Analyze the Law (and Find more Law by Topic)

• All About ALR (iTunes podcast)
• Treatises and Practice Guides (with Josh Horowitz) (vidcast)

Update and Verify the Law

• Keycite (vidcast)
• Shepards (vidcast)

Prepare for Class and Exams

• Study Aids in the Library

Supplemental Materials For 1L Classes

• Use the Classic Catalog to find Free Supplemental Materials For Your First Year Courses - (vidcast with Khalild Alkadhiry)
• The Library's Classic Catalog for 1Ls (vidcast with Lauren Kubota)
• Using Secondary Sources on Lexis (vidcast with Kathryn Londenberg)
• Using Secondary Sources on Westlaw (vidcast with Lauren Kubota)
• A Conversation about Civil Procedure Research and Secondary Sources (iTunes podcast)
• Jurisdiction and Controlling v. Persuasive Authority (iTunes podcast)
• Books for 1L's

  1st Year Lectures on CD:

  The Hastings Law Library has a collection of audio lectures on CD by distinguished professors from the "Law School Legends" series produced by Gilbert Law Summaries. They are available from the Circulation Desk. Students can check out the following CDs from the Library to listen or copy:

  Torts/ by Professor Richard J. Conviser [Chicago-Kent]

  Constitutional law/ by John C. Jeffries, Jr [University of Virginia Law School]

  Real property/ by Paula A. Franzese [Seton Hall Law School]

  Criminal law/ by Charles H. Whitebread [USC]
  
  Law school exam writing/ by Charles H. Whitebread [USC]
  Issued with the handout entitled: Eight secrets of top exam performance.

  Contracts/ by David Epstein [SMU]
  
  Civil procedure / by Richard D. Freer [Emory Law School]

Introduction to Library Resources

• The Library's Classic Catalog (vidcast)
• The Online Reference Collection
• A Photographic Field Guide to the Law Library (by Hastings Alum Adam Englehart)

Updated July 29, 2010 by Catherine Deane