Category: Library Resources

Try Exam Prep with West Academic Study Aids Online

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Enhance your exam prep with West Academic Study Aids!

W&L’s subscription provides easy online access to hundreds of the most popular and trusted hornbooks, outlines, nutshells, treatises, and audio lectures to help you review for exams. It includes study-aids covering virtually every law school course, including first-year subjects like Torts, Contracts, and Civil Procedure. All titles are downloadable for offline use and can also be viewed in any browser or mobile device.

For access, visit https://subscription.westacademic.com. At the top of the page, select “Create an Account,” select “Student” as your account type, and fill in the required information. Be sure to enter your W&L email address as your username to log in. To download items to read and listen to offline, get the West Academic Library app.

Our West Academic Study Aids collection includes:

…and more!

New Law Library Resources – November 2019

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Each month, the W&L Law Library adds many new books and online resources to our collection. We also issue a monthly newsletter in PDF that highlights our new acquisitions across popular topics for reading and research.

So, please take a moment to review our New Resources for November 2019. W&L Law faculty members may request any of these titles be routed to their office, and all patrons are welcome to browse the New Titles shelves just inside the main Library entrance on the Third Floor.

Newton D. Baker Scrapbooks

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The 27 volumes of newspaper clippings documenting the life of Newton D. Baker Jr., 1894L, and donated to the Powell Archives in 2015 by the law firm BakerHostetler, are now available in Scholarly Commons, the law school’s digital repository.

Below, page from 1912 scrapbook in Baker’s first year as Mayor of Cleveland.

Baker came to Washington and Lee School of Law after graduating from Johns Hopkins University. He practiced law in his home town of Martinsburg, West Virginia and then Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland became his life-long home where served as assistant law director, city solicitor and Mayor (1912-1916.) President Woodrow Wilson named him Secretary of War, an office he held during and immediately after World War I.

Though there was much more to his life after this — prominence in Ohio and then national Democratic party politics, founder of the law firm today know as BakerHosteler, champion of the League of Nations, etc. — it is these years in public service in Cleveland and Washington, DC that are documented in these scrapbooks.

The research value of the Secretary of War years, where he built an army of 2 million men in a matter of weeks, is obvious. The clippings from the Cleveland public office years, however, are rich as well. Baker was a progressive who believed in the ability of municipal government to make city life safer, healthier and richer for its citizens. In reading these news reports, one can see Baker inventing policies and programs in response to the growing pains of this vibrant early twentieth century city.

Above, Newton D. Baker in 1929. Ethel Standiford Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

Before Lewis F. Powell Jr. was elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States, Baker and famed Supreme Court advocate, John W. Davis, were considered the most eminent alumni of the law school. When the dormitories, spoken of today in the one term “Baker-Davis,” were built in their honor, they were the law school dorms.

Exams Got You Spooked? Check Out Our Study Aids!

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LAW STUDENTS BEWARE! Exams are already on the creep this Halloween… But don’t let that haunting feeling get the best of you. Look for a study aid from the Library’s Reserve Room Collection to help put a nail in the coffin on your finals preparation.

Our Reserve Room (third floor, diagonal from the Circulation Desk) offers a wide range of popular study aids in print, including Examples & Explanations (E&E’s), Nutshells, Sum and Substance Audio CDs, Gilbert Law Summaries, and Law in a Flash cards. Items can generally be checked out for 48 hours, after which return or renewal is required.

Dozens of these titles and many more are also accessible and downloadable online, free of charge for W&L Law students, through the Library’s West Academic Study Aids subscription.

Stop by the Reserve Room on Thursday 10/31 for special Halloween treats, and 1Ls: Browse for Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Torts guides anytime online in Beyond the Text: Study Guides for First-Year Classes.

New Law Library Resources – September 2019

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Each month, the W&L Law Library adds many new books and online resources to our collection. We also issue a monthly newsletter in PDF that highlights our new acquisitions across popular topics for reading and research.

So, please take a moment to review our New Resources for September 2019. W&L Law faculty members may request any of these titles be routed to their office, and all patrons are welcome to browse the New Titles shelves just inside the main Library entrance on the Third Floor.

New W&L Law Journal Rankings Now Online

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The new W&L Law Journal Rankings are now available at go.wlu.edu/lawjournals.

The Rankings are compiled and maintained by the W&L Law Library as a resource for identifying law journals by subject, country of publication, or ranking (where available), and to provide additional information to facilitate comparing and contacting law journals.

The Rankings are updated annually to include data up through the preceding completed calendar year. The newly released 2018 Rankings are based on citation data from a 2014-2018 survey period. Prior annual rankings data from the 1996-2003 to 2010-2017 survey periods remains accessible on the site for historical comparison.

Different from our previous annual Rankings, the 2018 Rankings release ranks the top 300 U.S.-published law journals and the top 50 law journals published outside the United States. Journals ranked below these thresholds display “NR” (Not Ranked) for each data category and are listed alphabetically.

Users of the Rankings include authors seeking to submit their writing to law journals, publishers and editorial boards of law journals, and university faculty and administrators interested in evaluating the qualities of academic legal periodicals.

For more information about the new and previous Rankings, please see the About & How to Use and Methodology pages of the site. Questions and comments are welcome at LawJournalRankings@wlu.edu.

New Database: Lexis Securities Mosaic

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W&L Law Library is pleased to offer access to Lexis Securities Mosaic, a premier platform for securities regulation management and research.

Securities Mosaic offers millions of documents, including both domestic and international filings, updated virtually in real time. Content includes U.S. SEC filings, Canadian SEDAR filings, U.K. NSM filings, Comment Letters, No-Action Letters, law firm memos, judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, business news, and more. Powerful mark-up, research, and organization tools make Securities Mosaic a unique, efficient, and effective resource for securities information.

The new Securities Mosaic subscription is available to the entire University: W&L Law community members may log in through their Lexis Advance accounts, while non-law W&L community members should access the platform via this link.

For help accessing or using Securities Mosaic, email LawRef@wlu.edu.

New Law Library Resources – August 2019

Andrew ChristensenLeave a comment

Each month, the W&L Law Library adds many new books and online resources to our collection. We also issue a monthly newsletter in PDF that highlights our new acquisitions across popular topics for reading and research.

So, please take a moment to review our New Resources for August 2019. W&L Law faculty members may request any of these titles be routed to their office, and all patrons are welcome to browse the New Titles shelves just inside the main Library entrance on the Third Floor.

New Law Library Resources – July 2019

Andrew ChristensenLeave a comment

Each month, the W&L Law Library adds many new books and online resources to our collection. We also issue a monthly newsletter in PDF that highlights our new acquisitions across popular topics for reading and research.

So, please take a moment to review our New Resources for July 2019. W&L Law faculty members may request any of these titles be routed to their office, and all patrons are welcome to browse the New Titles shelves just inside the main Library entrance on the Third Floor.

New Law Library Resources – June 2019

Andrew ChristensenLeave a comment

Each month, the W&L Law Library adds many new books and online resources to our collection. We also issue a monthly newsletter in PDF that highlights our new acquisitions across popular topics for reading and research.

So, please take a moment to review our New Resources for June 2019. W&L Law faculty members may request any of these titles be routed to their office, and all patrons are welcome to browse the New Titles shelves just inside the main Library entrance on the Third Floor.