The Library: Law: Practical Legal Research

Legal dictionaries & reference material

Halsbury's Laws of England This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive encyclopaedia of law that provides the only complete narrative statement of law in England and Wales - updated weekly. Organised by subject area, you can browse titles, consult the index or use search phrases.

Lexis+ Library's Words & Phrases Legally Defined
An anthology of selected judicial and statutory definitions gathered under relevant subject headings in alphabetical order.
Plain English guide to legal phrases
Guide to help non-lawyers understand legal phrases created by the Plain English campaign.

Westlaw UK This link opens in a new window
Choose the "Index of Legal Terms" tab from the top of the Westlaw home page. This allows you to search across legal dictionaries within Westlaw.

Certificates and guides for databases

Get a certificate of your law research skills!

These comprehensive guides and tutorials provide an in-depth course in using these products. For many databases you can work through a tutorial to receive a certificate of achievement.

Lexis

Westlaw

Westlaw UK Student Training (Certification)

Westlaw User Guide

Forms

Statistical information

Statista
Statistics portal containing a vast source of worldwide statistical information across a wide range of topics. It gives access to more than 1.5 million statistics, forecasts, dossiers, reports and infographics on 80,000 topics from more than 18,000 sources. It covers topics such as social media marketing, film industry, mobile internet, digital music, digital games and much more. You can also search for statistics on a topic you’re interested in and see what’s available.
Choose to download content as images, PowerPoint presentations or Excel spreadsheets. Includes comprehensive support information, allowing you to fully get to grips with the data and place it in context. .
- Visit the Statista help pages for support.
- Please note we do not have access to the Insights content.
- Accessibility statement for Statista.

Special Damages Tools

Practitioner resources

Lexis+ Practical Guidance (PSL)
Contains a homepage for each practice area (Company Commercial, Property and Dispute Resolution) holding essential resources chosen and compiled by an expert team of solicitors and barristers. LexisPSL provides KnowHow, primary law, precedents, forms and excerpts from authoritative Butterworths commentary. Additionally, links to Lexis+ Library take you directly to a broader range of relevant legal resources.
If required to log in to access, please use your standard University username and password - an additional Lexis account is not needed.
- If you cannot bypass the login page which asks for an ID, please try an alternative internet browser or go incognito in Chrome. If you are using a Mac and encounter issues accessing this resource - use Chrome. If you are unable to download articles please use the following link: https://signin.lexisnexis.com/lnaccess/app/ShowCookies and delete cookies.
- Please note that the academic license for this product does not allow for any non-academic (outside of teaching and learning) use.
- Accessibility statement for Lexis PSL.
Lexis+ Practical Guidance (PSL) Calculators
To access Lexis Calculators login to the link above then paste the link below into the same browser window. If you encounter an error please clear your cache/cookies or try an alternative browser.
https://plus.lexiscalculate.co.uk/calculator
- If you cannot bypass the login page which asks for an ID, please try an alternative internet browser or go incognito in Chrome. If you are using a Mac and encounter issues accessing this resource - use Chrome. If you are unable to download articles please use the following link: https://signin.lexisnexis.com/lnaccess/app/ShowCookies and delete cookies.
- Accessibility statement for Lexis PSL.
Halsbury's Laws of England
Covers the whole spectrum of English law and is designed to enable practitioners to answer the full range of questions likely to arise in the course of their work. It provides a comprehensive narrative statement of the law of England and Wales, containing law derived from every source.
- Accessibility statement for Halsbury's Laws of England.

Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents
Available via Lexis+ Library (go to Forms & Precedents > Precedents). Comprehensive source of precedents for (non-litigating) solicitors. It contains around 15,000 forms and precedents (including those for sale of land, landlord and tenant, commercial law, wills and trusts, family law).

SRA Standards & Regulations
These set out the standards and requirements the SRA expect their regulated community to achieve and observe, for the benefit of the clients they serve and in the public interest.

Cases - keeping up to date

RSS feeds and email updates can be created so you can easily keep up with developments in the law.

ICLR
The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) is the authorised publisher of the official series: The Law Reports for the Superior and Appellate Courts of England and Wales. Look for the 'Sign up' button for their Case Law Alert to receive weekly emails of new case law.
BAILII
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) is an organisation that aims to make the law available for free on its website. If you are interested in receiving notifications of new judgments from individual courts in the UK, or recent cases of interest, you can set up an RSS feed.

Court websites

Many courts publish judgments on their websites and often have an RSS feed option to allow you to stay up-to-date with new judgments. Here are a couple of examples:

Your Academic Librarians

Karen Fisher, Catherine Parkin, Maria Simões & Jennie Winterburn

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Subjects: Law

Practical legal research resources