The end of the school year is here! That means it is time to share information about accessing library databases and other resources while school is out for summer. If you are a not graduating this April, most of your access database remains the same over the summer. But there are a few things you should know: If you are doing paid work for a law firm, don’t use your Westlaw account: You can use Bloomberg Law and Lexis+ as much as you want, but Westlaw does not allow students to use their law school accounts for paid client research. You can use Westlaw to learn about an area of law thou ..read more

We are celebrating national library week with fun giveaways from April 8 – April 11. Stop by the desks at the second or third floor library entrances to grab a treat! Monday: Smart Pop Day. Start your week off on a smart note. Swing by the Circulation Desk on either floor to grab a bag of Smart Pop popcorn and fuel your studying sessions with this delicious snack. Tuesday: Roll-up to the Reserve Room. Celebrate the reopening of the Reserve Room with a delicious Fruit Roll Up. Wednesday: Library Pun Sticker Day. Add some library-themed flair to your notebooks, water bottles, and journals. Swin ..read more

The Law Library has access to Xchange, which is a Utah-government-owned and created database that provides access to Utah state district (trial) court dockets and documents, including traffic citations in Utah. It is to Utah law what PACER is to federal law, and if you practice law in Utah as an attorney, you will likely be using Xchange often for your cases. The library’s access to Xchange is open to non-law students or faculty, in addition to law students and law faculty; there are just different ways and purposes for the access. How to Access Xchange from Home BYU Law students and full-ti ..read more

Have you seen it yet? The new faculty scholarship display (FSD) in the Memorial Lounge? It’s right by the fireplace and is on the way to the law student kitchen by the Student Commons! The FSD was created by the BYU Law Library, under direction from Dean Moore, and features physical copies of recent BYU Law faculty publications. Most will be paperback copies of law review articles called “offprints.” Occasionally, we will have books with chapters written by faculty. For each piece of scholarship on display, there is a QR code, usually to access the scholarship electronically through SSRN (fr ..read more

Say hello to the Reference Assistant Team for the Winter 2024 Semester! These great law students are happy to help you with any of your reference questions! They are hired and overseen by Professor Annalee Hickman Pierson, and they work along side the full-time law library faculty members who offer reference help. Please meet: Margaret Jarvis (3L): Margaret Jarvis (3L): lover of all things Dungeons and Dragons, Tolstoy, Austen, and camping; favorite research tip is that every state has an index for its statues, which is often easier to use on Westlaw than a full-text search. Emma Hackett (3L ..read more

While we spend a little time in 1L legal research talking about practice materials, it isn’t really enough to do the topic justice. But it’s worth your time to take a look at Lexis’s practice-oriented resource, Practical Guidance, which you can select from the diamond-shaped icon on the left-hand navigation menu on Lexis’s homepage: Partial view of the primary left-hand navigation menu on Lexis+ Practical Guidance has lots of great resources including tools for in-house counsel and drafting merger agreements, and it just launched a new tool that can help law students doing clinic work, the P ..read more

Location The BYU Law Library Reserve Room is located on the main floor (which is the 2nd floor) of the library, in room 280 (near the Circulation Desk). It is surrounded on two sides by glass walls and is located directly behind three busts of Abraham Lincoln: Resources The room contains commonly-used texts, outlines, restatements, treatises, and so forth, as well as six months worth of newspapers.  Additionally, the room is home to the Benson Collection (donated by the family of Ezra Taft Benson), the Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Collection, and a current Utah law collection with ..read more

Despite the cat-astrophe of the lawyer who accidentally turned himself into a cat for his court appearance, the legal field (along with everyone else, it seems like) has determined that Zoom and other video conferencing softwares are just too convenient to get rid of.  Meetings, interviews, classes, and trainings often have video-conferencing options, and unless you want the whole school to hear your conference call, you’re going to need a private place to take the call. But, that doesn’t mean you have to go home for every online meeting—just walk right over to the BYU Law Library’s Zoom ..read more

Alert! You can now text the law librarians! If you’re like me, you would much prefer to send a text than make a call or send an email. It’s less formal, quicker, and more convenient. If you are also like me, then you’ve probably gotten stuck multiple times while doing legal research and wished you could send a quick message to get some help. Well, wish no more, because the law librarians are now available for questions via text.  Before text-a-librarian, the BYU Law Library Reference Services were available via emailing reference@law.byu.edu, calling (801) 422-3596, making an appointment ..read more

The next time you log into Bloomberg Law, you will notice a brand-new homepage. The purpose of the new page is to provide users with a custom experience. Instead of a pre-selected slate of resources, you can populate the page with the resources you use most. Clicking on the box “+ Add popular links to your favorites” gives you a selection of twelve resources to choose from: However, many popular and useful resources are not included in the box. To add additional resources, navigate to that resource in Bloomberg Law and click on the star in the upper-right corner, which will turn it blue and ..read more