Arrangements giving students free remote access to casebooks and texts, offered by publishers during the Spring Semester, are expiring, or have expired. This includes texts accessed online through the LexisNexis Digital Library, VitalSource, and West Academic.
Students enrolled in Summer Semester courses will not have free online access to required texts. Please keep in mind that the Mendik Library will remain closed during the Summer Semester, and that you will not be able to borrow physical copies of your course reserve items.
Summer Semester students are encouraged to purchase their required texts through the NYLS online bookstore. Several publishers offer ebook versions of texts to students who have purchased or rented print copies. These offers vary from publisher to publisher. Please take careful note of details when you purchase the books.
During the summer the publishers of The Bluebook will continue to offer online access, at no cost, to members of the NYLS community who do not have access to a print copy. If you wish to take advantage of this offer, please email the Library at reference@nyls.edu. Your request must come from a NYLS email address.
Student access to Bloomberg Law, Lexis Advance and Westlaw are based on academic subscription plans maintained by New York Law School.
Bloomberg Law: Bloomberg Law provides unlimited and unrestricted access over the summer. Your student account will remain active and available all summer, without any additional registration required.
Lexis Advance: From May 1 to August 31, 2020, students may use their Lexis Advance password for any purpose at school or at work, including any paid or unpaid legal work.
Westlaw: You can use Thomson Reuters products, including Westlaw and Practical Law, over the summer for non-commercial research. You can turn to these resources to gain understanding and build confidence in your research skills, but you cannot use them in situations where you are billing a client (paid legal work). Examples of permissible uses for your academic password include the following:
• Summer coursework
• Research assistant assignments
• Law Review or Journal research
• Moot Court research
• Non-Profit work
• Clinical work
• Externship sponsored by the school
If you are working for a firm or a for-profit organization, you should use the Westlaw account provided by your employer.
For more information, please visit:
https://www.nyls.edu/library/for_students/summergradaccess/
As you begin the process of course registration, make sure to consider these valuable Legal Research classes, Legal Research: Practical Skills (1-cr.) and Legal Research: Skills for the Digital World (3-cr.). Find more details here, Why Focus on Research Skills, which lays out the NYLS Student Competencies and Learning Outcomes.
Good news—Bloomberg Law has just announced that it will provide free, unrestricted access to 2020 graduating law students through June 1, 2021. That’s six months longer than either Lexis or Westlaw!
Be sure to take advantage of what Bloomberg Law has to offer, including access to:
• In Focus pages and legal news to stay on top of turbulent areas of law and legal practice
• Practical Guidance and other Legal Research tools to provide support in legal practice
• Company Screener and Litigation Analytics to research companies and law firms for potential employment
• A full library of on-demand training webinars
New York Law School’s temporary access to casebooks, texts, and some study aids on the LexisNexis Digital Library will expire on Friday, May 15. This includes works published by Carolina Academic Press and LexisNexis. (It does NOT include works published by Aspen, Wolters Kluwer, Foundation Press or West Academic.)
We very much regret this inconvenience. We contacted representatives from both LexisNexis and Carolina Academic Press, asking for an extension. They declined our request, stating that their policies around licensing and royalties are very strict.
Thus, if you are preparing for exams using ebooks published by Carolina Academic Press or LexisNexis on the LexisNexis Digital Library, your access will terminate on May 15. However, if your exams are after that date, there are two ways that you can preserve the content you need:
Method 1: Use the LexisNexis Digital Library’s print function for the sections of the ebooks that you need. When you navigate to a chapter, you have the option of printing a section, which is the full text of that chapter. Choose “print”, and then use the “print to PDF” feature. The PDFs that you create can be saved to your computer for permanent use. Unfortunately, you cannot choose to print an entire book; you can only go section-by-section, which is chapter-by-chapter for the chapters you need. Make sure to do this before May 15.
Method 2: Ebooks you download on LexisNexis Digital’s new platform will probably remain available to you for 14 days. If you haven’t used the new platform, you can go here: https://lexisdl.com/library/nyls Our institutional code is nyls. Remember to use your NYLS network ID, not your Lexis login credentials, to use this resource. The new platform works best on the Chrome browser. You can also use the new platform on the LexisNexis Digital Library app, available for free on Google Play and the App Store. Once you have chosen “Read” for an ebook, it is automatically downloaded to your mobile device. Make sure to do this before May 15.
The publishers’ representatives could not guarantee that Method 2 would actually work.
Also, please note that the May 15 expiration affects only the group of Carolina Academic Press and LexisNexis publications that were provided to us temporarily, in response to the COVID crisis. A large collection of other useful study aids and treatises will remain available to students indefinitely on the LexisNexis Digital Library. If you’re uncertain whether the works you need are expiring, don’t hesitate to contact us at reference@nyls.edu .
Each year on May 1st, the United States celebrates Law Day. First designated in 1958 by President Eisenhower, Law Day celebrates the rule of law and its contributions to Americans’ many freedoms. This year’s theme is “Your Vote, Your Voice, Our Democracy: The 19th Amendment at 100,” commemorating the constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.
The Law Library of Congress has a Law Day Research Guide, with links to legislative and executive documents as well as books, journal articles and speech transcripts. Additional information on Law Day and materials relating to this year’s theme are on the ABA’s Law Day web page.
If you’ve got 30 minutes we can help hone your Bluebook skills!
The Library is offering a series of online Bluebook classes via Zoom beginning Wednesday April 8 at 5:15 p.m. The complete schedule can be found here.
The classes are intended for any member of the NYLS community who has questions about using the Bluebook. While the Bluebook may look daunting at first glance, spending a few minutes learning how to use it can save you hours of anguish during crunch time when your brief, paper or Journal assignment is coming due.
Remember, you can gain access to the online Bluebook by following these instructions (bottom of page).
If there are other research classes you would find helpful, send your suggestion(s) to reference@nyls.edu. We will try our best to offer additional online instruction via Zoom.
On March 28, 1955, NYLS alumnus John Marshall Harlan ’24 formally took his seat as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. An article titled “Mr. Worth Street,” appearing in the April/May 1998 issue of the NYLS student newspaper The Reporter, provides a short sketch of the Justice’s professional career and his connection to the school.
The law school celebrated the formal naming of the portion of Worth Street between Church Street and West Broadway as Justice John M. Harlan Way in May 1991 as part of the law school’s centennial celebration.
The Law Librarians at the Library of Congress have created a Coronavirus Resource Guide, a regularly updated source of federal and state legislation as well as presidential executive orders and proclamations addressing COVID-19. The guide also provides links to Congressional Research Service Reports relating to the coronavirus (43 published to date).
The publishers of The Bluebook: a Uniform System of Citation are offering online access, at no cost, to members of the NYLS community who do not have access to a print copy. If you wish to take advantage of this offer, please email the Library at reference@nyls.edu. Your request must come from a NYLS email address.
