Research Guides: *Law: CMU Library Law Collection

CMU Subscriptions

Westlaw
Offers full text coverage to thousands of news databases arranged geographically and topically, hundreds of newswires as well as business, trade, and professional publications. Full text access to federal and state case and statutory law, and European Union information.
HeinOnline
Hein’s premier online research product with more than 70 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. Hein Online indexes legal and legislative information available for U.S. states and territories including bills and laws, constitutions, regulations, legislature membership, public policy, state newspapers of record, and more. The database is divided into collections. The collections include: the Law Journal Library, Federal Regulation Libraries, the Treaties and Agreements Library, the U.S. Supreme Court Library, Religion and the Law, Women and the Law, plus books containing legal classics. It bridges the gap in history by providing coverage from inception of over 2,000 periodicals.

Bloomberg Law
The Bloomberg Terminal provides access to Bloomberg Law (BLAW) with other services. There are two terminals in Park Library on the 2nd floor outside of the Copeland Suite and one terminal on the 1st floor in the 1 North study room.

Introduction to Thomson Reuters Westlaw - a vidoe

Westlaw Classic trainings videos

Getting started
Case law research
Statutory research
Regulatory research
Verifying citations
Secondary Sources
Litigation
Transactional - how to find and use forms, how to conduct research on both public and private companies, how to search corporate filings and agreements, how to use Business Law Center resources
Public Records
Organize and share research
Notifications and alerts

Getting Started in HeinOnline
Training Videos Archives
HeinOnline guides learn about database content and interface functionality.

Bloomberg Law - Main Functions

Westlaw vs. HeinOnline

Focus and strengths

Westlaw: Is designed to be a legal research tool for legal professionals, focusing on providing current and authoritative legal information for practical application and litigation support.
HeinOnline: Is invaluable for historical and archival legal research, providing access to a rich collection of scholarly and primary legal sources.

Content and coverage

Westlaw: Offers a vast collection of primary law (cases, statutes, regulations) and secondary sources (legal encyclopedias, treatises, law reviews). It excels in up-to-date legal information and is particularly strong for finding case law and statutes across various jurisdictions.
HeinOnline: Specializes in historical legal materials and boasts a archive of academic law journals, government documents, treatises, and other historical legal resources.

Format and usability

Westlaw: Primarily provides text-based documents with editorial enhancements like headnotes and Key Numbers, which help categorize legal concepts for efficient searching. It offers advanced search capabilities and tools like KeyCite for citation checking.
HeiOnline: Delivers content as image-based PDFs, preserving the original formatting and pagination of the printed source. This is particularly useful for historical research where the appearance of the original document matters.

Michigan eLibrary

Legal Information Source (EBSCO)
Legal Information Source is an online database designed to assist the general public in legal matters of all kinds. It includes exclusive full text for many top consumer legal reference books, as well as thousands of legal forms.
Legal Source (EBSCO)
Providing indexing and full-text coverage of the most respected scholarly law journals, Legal Source is the authoritative database for current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world. It is an excellent resource for attorneys, educators, business people, law librarians, students, paralegals and others involved with the law.

The Print Law Collection in Park Library

The print law collection is located in Park Library. You can use Library Smart Search to find a specific item and locate the item on the shelves following the call number. Call numbers are assigned by subjects. K is the call number for law materials. You can follow Library of Congress classification call numbers to browse the print law collection.