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The Library: Law

Law reports

Provides access to British and Irish legal materials. The service includes decisions from courts and tribunals in 14 databases from 5 jurisdictions. Good place to look for unreported cases.

Archived judgments delivered by the Law Lords from 14 November 1996 to 30 July 2009

Free case summary service from ICLR. Part of The Daily Law Notes service; providing free 24 hour access to summaries in an easy to use format.

Legislation

Official, freely available source of revised edition of UK legislation.

Freely available webpages from OPSI (Office of Public Sector Information).  Legislation is as enacted rather than revised.

Free current awareness sites

A good way to keep up to date and be alerted to newspaper articles on legal topics is to sign up to the current awareness from the innertemple alert.

Also check out this list of free links for legal current awareness sources

After Leeds Beckett: free legal sources and preparing for work

This page has been developed in response to enquiries from final year students who are concerned they may not be able to have access to a wide range of resources when they leave University.

The resources on this page are a collection of (mostly) freely available resources such as open access journals, websites and professional organisations designed to help you in your professional practice.

Good luck in your future profession from Leeds Beckett Library.

Web subject gateways for law

All About Law-training contracts
Website containing links to training contracts from most of the UK's biggest law firms.

Eagle-i search for Law
Helps legal researchers find relevant information on the Internet - providing insight into authoritative web resources and the most reliable sites and materials. Coverage includes: UK, European, Foreign, Comparative and International law.

Delia Venables Legal Resources
Well regarded legal gateway site. It is split into the following sections aimed at specific audiences, Information for Individuals, Information for Students, Information for Companies, Information for Lawyers.

Hieros Gamos
A very comprehensive site providing links to worldwide information on the legal profession, including links to electronic journals, law directories and others. Many sources are full text.

Information for Lawyers Ltd.
A publishing company providing electronic publishing products and services for the legal market. The Web site includes browse-able indexes of the UK legal Web. Includes articles on the Internet by Nick Holmes originally published in the Solicitors Journal.

LAWLINKS: Legal Information on the Internet
Maintained by the Templeman Law Library at the University of Kent at Canterbury to help students and others find their way around legal resources on the internet.

Starting Points for Legal Research on the Internet
Provided by Bristol University Law Department, this site aims to provide a starting point by directing users to some of the core gateways and organisations for legal research. UK focus.

Find a graduate job

BCL Graduates

BCL Graduates offers graduating law students a place to share their CVs, and search for jobs and helpful employability hints and tips: from writing CVs to interview techniques.  It also allows employers to fill graduate vacancies by searching for people based on their education, grades, previous work experience, location and availability.  The site now has over 200 law firms and in house legal departments using it to recruit their paralegals and graduates from.

Chambers UK

Search for ranked lawyers and law firms in the UK

Guardian Graduate job search

The Guardian lists company and agency graduate level jobs in the legal profession.

Indeed

Indeed is an international job vacancy website, and lists many Law graduate positions in the UK with firms and agencies.

Milkround

This website contains information about different job opportunities in the legal profession as well as listing graduate jobs.

Westlaw -Interview advice

How to impress in training contract interviews - Key tips for success.

Volunteer in law

Free online legal journals

Open Doar this site searches several open access repositories (in which academic institutions place versions of their journal articles online so they are freely available). A search for “judicial review” retrieves over 100 articles, many from LSE.

DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals. The Law section provides basic information on and links to about 100 legal journals from jurisdictions worldwide. Try a search for “judicial review” on DOAJ.

The Barrister - an independent magazine aimed at practising barristers. Articles from Issue 17 (June 2003) onwards are available via the archive page and on an archived web site.

In House Lawyer - journal aimed at in-house counsel of the UK and EMEA. Content freely available on its web site includes selected articles, which can be searched or browsed by subject. Coverage for most categories is September 2008 onwards, with earlier articles available in some categories.

Web Journal of Current Legal Issues  - web journal covering legal issues in judicial decisions, law reform, legislation, legal research, legal information and related topics. All issues to date are freely available on the site.

Google Scholar  can be useful, but you will only be able to view those articles which are freely available. These should be identified as those which PDF links on the right side of the screen.

Google Books   is also worth looking at, as there are many free excerpts of books.

Useful organisations

Bar Council

The professional body for barristers in England and Wales.

BCL Graduates

Free website dedicated to placing graduating law students into graduate posts.

Crime and Justice

Information on the Government Department, the courts, legal system and publications.

European Union: Europa

EUROPA is the portal site of the European Union.

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies serves all universities through its national legal research library.

International Court of Justice

Information about the court, including press releases.

Law Commission

The Law Commission is the Statutory Independent Body created by the Law Commissions Act 1965 to keep the law under review and to recommend where reform is needed. This site includes information on current areas of Law under review and includes the Law Commission Library which gives full text of recent Commission publications.

Law Society

"The Law Society represents solicitors in England and Wales. From negotiating with and lobbying the profession's regulators, government and others, to offering training and advice" they "help, protect and promote solicitors across England and Wales".

Legal 500

"The Legal 500 provides the most comprehensive worldwide coverage on recommended Law firms, Lawyers, Attorneys, Advocates, Solicitors and Barristers."

Society of Legal Scholars (SLS)

Their aim is "advancement of legal education and scholarship in the United Kingdom and Ireland".

Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)

The SRA provide advice to help solicitors follow the professional code of conduct. There is an online directory of solicitors too.

Gov.UK

"The best place to find government services and information."