Law library
From LawGuru Wiki
A law library is a library designed to assist law students, attorneys, judges, and their law clerks in finding the legal resources necessary to correctly determine the state of the law. Every American law school is required by the American Bar Association to have a law library meeting certain minimum specifications with respect to quantity and quality of materials available. Some law school libraries are kept in the same building as the general library, but many are either in the law school's building, or in a separate facility altogether. Most court buildings also have a law library, with the United States Supreme Court having one of the most extensive in the world. Some of the larger law firms and corporate law departments maintain a private library for their own attorneys, but many firms in larger cities simply dispatch their attorneys to local law schools to do legal research.
A typical law library will include in its collection a large number of works not seen in other libraries, including a full set of United States Reports, State Reporters from various states, the Federal Register, volumes of American Jurisprudence, and bound volumes containing issues of prominent law reviews from around the country.
In recent years, the advent of online legal research outlets such as FindLaw, Westlaw, Lexis, and HeinOnline has reduced the need for printed volumes. A number of law libraries have therefore reduced the availability of printed works that can easily be found on the internet, and have increased their own internet availability.
The American Association of Law Libraries[1] is a good source of information on law librarians and law librarianship.
