Student Resources
As a student at Michigan Law, you have access to the best in legal research resources right under your feet.
The Underground Library and Law Library staff are devoted to your scholarship, study, and skills development.
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Reserve a Group Study Room
There are ten Group Study Rooms (GSRs) along the perimeter of the Reading Room, as well as one room in the Lower Commons, available for use by Law Students.
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Course Texts & Scans
A complete list of assigned course texts and scans of material for each semester is available on the Course Texts Dashboard.
Before the start of each academic term, the reading assignments for the first day of classes are posted online. -
Need Help? Ask A Law Librarian
Librarians are available at the Information Desk on Sub-1 of the underground library at the following times while Law School classes are in session:
- Sunday: 2 pm - 6 pm
- Monday - Wednesday: 1 pm - 6 pm
- Thursday & Friday: 1 pm - 5 pm
The Ask A Law Librarian chat service is staffed while Law School classes are in session and is available to all of our patrons, but is designed to meet the legal research needs of UM students, staff, and faculty.
Chat is monitored during the times listed above when a Librarian is at the Information Desk.
Emails are monitored during business hours, Monday - Friday.
Email Us
Michigan law students may schedule an appointment to meet in person or virtually with a Reference Librarian.
Schedule an Appointment
Text us at 734-329-5606 -
Study Aids
The library has study aids in print and online. Print study aids can be checked out from the main information desk in the core of Sub-1. Both print and online study aids are listed on our guide to study aids by course.
West Study Aids
Some of the most popular study aids—including the Nutshell series, Hornbooks, and Black Letter Outlines—are available to Michigan Law students online through West Study Aids (or through the West Academic Library app).
CALI Online Lessons
Get extra video lessons and quiz your knowledge in dozens of subjects using CALI Online Lessons. These interactive, computer-based tutorials are for all levels of students, from 1L year to your final coursework.
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Exam Prep and Past Exams
Study for your exam with past exam questions
As a law student, you can find old exams by your professor or on the same subject in the Law Library catalog.
Electronic copies of past exams are organized by Professor’s name.
If a professor has taught multiple courses, past exams from all that professor’s courses will be linked on that professor’s catalog record.
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Request a Scan
The Law Library will scan journal articles, book chapters, and other limited sections of print material and deliver it right to your email. Request scans using the “Request a Scan” button in the catalog.
The Law Library’s scanning and student document delivery service is for research purposes. That means that we cannot scan course texts, casebooks, or study aids. If you need digital copies of portions of these materials, the Law Library has many scanners available for your use.
The amount of scanning the Law Library can provide is limited by U.S. copyright law. If your request exceeds the limits of copyright law, we will cancel the scan request and instruct you to submit a request for the physical item so you can review the material in person.
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Interlibrary Loan
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Reserve a Carrel
Carrels in the law library may be reserved for a semester at a time.
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Online Resources and Databases
Westlaw and Lexis
While you are a Michigan Law student, you have access to the commercial legal databases Westlaw and Lexis. While both of these databases include U.S. state and federal case law, statutes, and regulations, they each offer their own unique selection of secondary sources (like treatises and law journal articles), helpful tools (like case citators and data analysis), and additional material (like public records or court dockets).
Be sure to become familiar with each database—you never know what you’ll need to use when you break out into legal practice.
Popular Legal Databases
In addition to Westlaw and Lexis, the Law Library provides access to many more databases you will return to again and again for your legal research. Some of the major ones are the following:
HeinOnline is an invaluable source of law journal articles, historical federal statutes and regulations, and international research material.
ProQuest Congressional is the place to find federal legislative history documents, from 18th century Annals of Congress to last month’s hearing transcripts.
VitalLaw is where you look when business and law intersect, with materials on antitrust, corporate and securities, banking, intellectual property, and tax law.
Checkpoint Edge is a full-text database of federal, state, and some international primary tax materials, as well as a number of important secondary tax research sources.
E-books
The Law Library provides access to thousands of electronic titles, in addition to the print titles in our collection. You can find ebooks by searching the Law Library catalog or browsing one of dozens of ebook collections, like the following:
West Study Aids has over 500 titles from West, Foundation, and Gilbert publishers, including Hornbooks, Nutshells, Gilbert Law Summaries, Black Letter, and Law Stories, just for Michigan Law students.
Oxford Reference Library: Law. This fully indexed, cross-searchable database has dictionaries, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press on the subject of law.
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Research Guides
Research Guides are devoted to a particular area of law, legal resource, type of research, or other discrete subject. Examples of Research Guides available through the Law Library include:
Treatise Finder
When you want to learn about a body of law and don’t know where to start, Treatise Finder is the place to go. Treatise Finder is curated list of books and resources, organized by legal subject. Within each topic, you will find introductory resources, in-depth resources, and related topics.
FAQs
Sometimes you have a question that you know has been asked a million times, but now it’s your turn to find the answer. The Law Library’s FAQs serve as a repository of answers about legal reference, Library information and policies, and information for Michigan Law students.
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Other Campus Resources
In addition to the Law Library collection, as a member of the University community, you have access to University Libraries which are among the top ten academic libraries in North America.
The University Libraries house collections that number more than seven million books, current journals, video and audio media, and maps located in over twenty individual library locations across campus, as well as world-renowned digital libraries that include millions of electronic documents and books. The collections of the University Library can also be searched using U-M Library Search.
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Services for Law Journal Students