Legal Databases

The Law Library—plus the Stanford University Libraries generally—provides access to hundreds of online research tools. For detailed descriptions of our most popular databases, please scroll down or click “i“. To learn about these and other available tools from a reference librarian, please e-mail reference@law.stanford.edu or call 650 725.0800.

Popular Databases

ALM Legal Intelligence

ALM Legal Intelligence Online is an integrated, online database of the legal industry covering ALM’s rankings and surveys- attorney counts, billing, branch offices, corporate representation and capital markets work, corporate legal departments, diversity and pro bono. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

NOTICE: Access to ALM Legal Intelligence content is provided for educational and research purposes and may NOT be posted.

BNA

BNA [Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.] — now formally Bloomberg BNA — publishes over 200 print and electronic news, analysis, and reference products that provide widely-respected, intensive coverage of legal and regulatory developments for decision makers in business and government. All BNA Law Reports are now also available on Bloomberg Law (BLAW) — please see below for more information about BLAW. And you are welcome to contact the Reference Desk with questions. BNA access is limited to the Stanford Law School community. Within the law school buildings, IP access is provided. For off-campus access, please contact the the Reference Desk by telephone to 650 725 0800 or by e-mail. Law students, staff and faculty can request electronic subscriptions — again, by telephone to 650 725 0800 or by e-mail to the Reference Desk — in the following BNA product areas:

  • Antitrust
  • Banking
  • Bankruptcy
  • Corporate
  • Criminal Law
  • Employee Benefits
  • Employment and Labor
  • Environment and Safety
  • Ethics
  • Family Law
  • Health Care
  • Homeland Security
  • Intellectual Property
  • International
  • International Tax
  • Litigation
  • Product Liability
  • Securities and Corporate Responsibility
  • Tax
  • Trade and Commerce

Bloomberg Law (BLAW)

This product is from the well-known provider of business and financial news data and described as an “all inclusive tool providing in-depth legal analysis, filings, opinions, real-time and archival news, indexes, rankings, company and biographical information, research and streaming live trial coverage on a single, integrated desktop platform.” Access is via either of the two dedicated Bloomberg terminals on the first floor of the law library or, more conveniently, using a Bloomberg Law” (BLAW) account on any computer connected to the Internet/World Wide Web. Stanford Law School students, staff and faculty may go HERE to apply for and activate an account. For further information, please inquire at the reference desk by telephone to 650 725 0800 or by e-mail to the Reference Desk or call or email the below BLAW representatives directly.

Contact Information:

BLAW Relationship Manager: Shaina Zamaitis
E-mail: szamaitis@bloomberg.net or szamaitis@bna.com
TEL 415 617 7318

24/7 Customer Support: 888 560 2529
E-mail: webhelp@bloomberg.net

CasemakerX

Free service (and a product of Lawriter, LLC, a division of Collexis Holdings, Corp., a “contextual” search software company) supported by the Casemaker Bar Consortium and its large attorney membership consisting of state bar associations across the United States. The suite of free materials includes case law, codes & statutes, medical support documents and experts, and languages. Each user signs up individually at the Member Login box.

CEB OnLAW

The OnLAW database from California’s Continuing Education of the Bar provides access to more than 125 of CEB’s California practice guides. OnLAW’s “libraries” organize the CEB guides by practice area, namely: business law; criminal law; estate planning; family law; litigation; and real property law. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online

Use Eighteenth Century Collections Online to access the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 33 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more. Access is limited to the Stanford University community.

Environmental Law Reporter

Published by the Environmental Law Institute, the ELR covers recent developments in the courts, Congress, and agencies and contains primary law sources and articles and analysis of environmental law issues. Stanford Law students and faculty can request the password at the Reference Desk.

Fastcase

Fastcase is an online legal research tool providing access to federal and state cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and bar publications by keyword (or “Boolean” search), natural language search, or citation lookup. Information about Fastcase’s scope of coverage and documentation is on the product website www.fastcase.com. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community.

Foreign Law Guide

Current sources of codes and basic legislation in jurisdictions from around the world. Foreign Law Guide access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

Goldstein on Copyright (CCH IntelliConnect)

A comprehensive treatise with detailed analysis of every aspect of copyright law, from registration to licensing to infringement and litigation. Written by Paul Goldstein, Stanford Law School professor and Of Counsel to Morrison & Foerster. Includes explanations of applicable copyright law to the music, publishing, motion picture, commercial art, and software industries. Also covers international copyright law, as well as the intersection of copyright law with bankruptcy, antitrust law, and Lanham Act doctrines that fill in the gaps in traditional copyright protection.  Access is limited to Stanford Law School users only — and requires free registration (of a user ID and password) with CCH IntelliConnect — via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

HeinOnline

The Modern Link to Legal History…Hein-On-Line contains full text of many law journals dating back to the 1800’s. Users may browse by journal name, author or article, and full-text searching is also available. Numerous other valuable products are also available (such as Bar Journals, the Code of Federal Regulations, English Reports (Full Reprint, 1220-1867), Federal Register Library, Foreign Relations of the United States, Israel Law Reports, Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, Pentagon Papers, Subject Compilations of State Laws (1960-2010), Treaties and Agreements Library, United States Code, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Supreme Court Library). Access to Hein-On-Line is limited to the Stanford University community. For easy access use: HeinOnline EZPROXY

IFAR

The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) provides access to the Art Law and Cultural Property Database, a resource for current data on legal issues ranging from fraud and forgery to ownership, provenance, valuation, and appraisal regarding art objects and cultural properties. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings. Please inquire at the Reference Desk

Index to Legal Periodicals & Books

Bibliographic database citing articles from law journals and books from 1908 to present. Coverage includes law reviews, bar association journals, university publications, yearbooks, institutes, and government publications. Full text is available from 1995 forward.

For citations from 1981 to present only, use: Index to Legal Periodicals and Books

For citations from 1908-1981, use: Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective

Investor-State LawGuide

(ISLG)™ is a resource for international investment treaty law materials capturing the relationships between treaties, arbitral rules, cases and other key materials. Access is limited to the Stanford University community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings. Please note features in this website are best experienced with Microsoft IE8+ and Adobe Reader 9.3+

Justis International Law Reports and United Kingdom (UK) Statutes and Statutory Instruments

The UK Statutes product contains the full text of all Acts of Parliament in England, Wales and Scotland as enacted, from 1235 to the present day. UK Statutes is the only statute-law database to contain Scottish Acts of Parliament and repealed legislation. International Law Reports contains cases in English from national and international courts from 1919 to present. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

Kluwer Arbitration (CCH IntelliConnect)

Kluwer Arbitration is a comprehensive database of international commercial arbitration primary and secondary resources. It provides commentary from expert authors and an extensive collection of primary source materials, including ICC cases and awards. Access is limited to Stanford Law School users only — and requires free registration (of a user ID and password) with CCH IntelliConnect — via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

Knowledge [now “Lexis Securities”] Mosaic

An online information resource for legal professionals working in the securities law area. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

LawInfoChina/Chinalawinfo

English- and Chinese-language resources on Chinese law created and maintained by Chinalawinfo Co., Ltd., and the Legal Information Center of Peking University. It includes full-text databases for laws, regulations, cases, and legal news. Search tips and FAQ are available to assist your research.

Law Journal Press

Law Journal Press publishes print and online treatises on a broad range of legal and business topics. Written by leading lawyers and experts, Law Journal Press offers analysis and practitioner-oriented guidance. Treatises are updated automatically online and offer enhanced features – searchable text and index, one-click access to fully integrated cases and statutes. This resource is available to all Stanford University students, staff and faculty via IP-range access. For easy use from off-campus, please visit: EZPROXY (under “Law Journal Press”).

LLMC Digital

LLMC is a non-profit cooperative serving member libraries’ needs for preservation, space recovery, and collection development on film and online. In its first 27 years of operation, it filmed over 7,500 titles, some 90,000 volumes, of interest to researchers in law and history. Its backfile comprises the world’s largest collection of legal literature and government documents in microform. That backfile, and future filming of some 10,000 volumes per year, are being made available for online access on this website.

Leadership Library

The Leadership Library Online provides who’s who information from 14 sectors in the United States, including corporate, financial, government (federal, local and state) and non-profit. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community generally via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings — although there is some remote, off-campus access available. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

Legal Scholarship Network

The Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) publishes a series of electronic journals of abstracts — of working papers as well as articles — in various areas of law. The Legal Scholarship Network also publishes weekly Professional Announcements that include announcements such as important professional meetings, calls for papers and special issues of journals, and Professional Job Listings. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School Community generally via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings — although there is some remote, off-campus access available. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

Lex Machina

Lex Machina is an IP research tool that captures data by crawling PACER, the ITC’s EDIS, and the USPTO website everyday. Its Legal Analytics can then mine this litigation data to reveal insights about judges, lawyers, parties, and patents. Stanford Law School faculty, students and staff may request access for academic research. For more information and to sign up for the required online training, go to Lex Machina Public Interest.

LEXIS/NEXIS

Contact Information:

In the Library & At Home:
Lexis/Nexis Customer Support: 1 800 543 6862

LexisNexis Law School Customer Support: 1 800 455 3947

Additional Service

Legal Education Applications Consultant: Jessica Bride
E-mail: jessica.bride@lexisnexis.com
TEL: 415 624 7489

Student Reps:
E-mail: lexis-help@lists.stanford.edu

Messages:
Messages for the student associates may be left in their mail slots.

CourtLink (see here for information) is Lexis/Nexis’ U.S. federal [see PACER] and state court docket product, comprehensively capturing the documents that are filed during the course of lawsuits. CourtLink is accessible, by logging in here, using one’s Lexis ADVANCE username and one’s last name in ALLCAPS.

Regarding Lexis ADVANCE, as of June 22, 2013, it became the sole LexisNexis interface, replacing the Lexis.com interface. However, it is still possible to use Lexis.com after logging into ADVANCE. Please log in here and then select “lexis.com” button from the upper left-hand corner drop-down menu.

Access to the above-described LexisNexis products is limited to the Stanford Law School community and requires personal, custom usernames and passwords from each, individual user. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

Loislaw Treatise Libraries

The Loislaw Treatise Libraries provide access the full-text of more than 130 titles organized into two dozen legal topics. These guides offer legal analysis and practice-oriented tools such as forms, checklists and tips to help with the preparation of pleadings and other documents. Popular titles include Wigmore on Evidence, The Law of Lawyering and the Mauet Trial Practice series. For easy access use: LoislawConnect EZPROXY under “Secondary Law”

Making of Modern Law (Gale Artemis: Primary Sources)

The Gale Artemis: Primary Sources platform enables full-text searching across the distinct collections that comprise The Making of Modern Law. MOML collections include:

  • US & UK Legal Treatises, 1800-1926. Ten million pages from more than 21,000 American and British casebooks, practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches, etc. separated into 99 subject areas.
  • Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926. Features works of some of the great legal theorists, including Gentili, Grotius, Selden, Zouche, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Wolff, Vattel, Martens, Mackintosh, and Wheaton, among others. It also features foreign legal treatises from a variety of countries, including equivalent works in civil-law systems such as commentaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, monographs, or festschriften. MoML FCIL also features books that compare more than one legal system and includes Ancient, Roman, Jewish Law, and Islamic Law.
  • Trials, 1600-1926. Almost two million pages from more than 10,000 titles relating to Anglo-American trials. The collection includes unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs and arguments, and official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings and arbitrations.

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL)

The MPEPIL online edition — edited under the direction of Professor Dr. Rüdiger Wolfrum, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Max Planck Institute) in Heidelberg, Germany — is a comprehensive analytical resource covering the whole of public international law. MPEPIL includes material from the hard-copy Encyclopedia of Public International Law published between 1991 and 2001 under Professor Dr. Rudolf Bernhardt, plus online-only articles authored since 2001. Approximately 1,700 article topics have been selected by the editorial advisory board and allocated to expert authors, who are legal scholars and practitioners from all over the world and who speak in their personal capacity only. Please inquire at the Reference Desk about access to MPEPIL.

Newspapers

Newspapers (current and historical) such as the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post can be accessed via ProQuest’s Social Science Module on the Stanford University Databases webpage by searching under the subject “News” or for “ProQuest” or the individual newspaper’s name. Access is limited to members of the Stanford community.

Essential United States federal legislative history resource available to all Stanford University students, staff and faculty via IP range access. For easy access use: EZPROXY (under “LexisNexis Congressional”).

Reference Desk if you would like to set up an account.

Oxford Handbooks Online – Criminology and Criminal Justice

Collection of the best Handbooks in the subject area of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In addition to Handbooks, the collection includes scholarly articles with new articles added montly. Access is limited to the Stanford Law School community via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

PACER

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service of the United States Courts that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and from the U.S. Party/Case Index. Access is restricted and a PACER login and a password are required. Please inquire at the Reference Desk. N.B. Before inquiring about PACER, all Stanford Law School students, staff and faculty should first activate and explore a Bloomberg Law (BLAW) account in order to try using BLAW’s “Search Dockets” function under “Litigation & Dockets” or else use LexisNexis’ CourtLink product [see “Courtlink” entry above for log-in instructions].

Questions? Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

ProQuest Congressional

Essential United States federal legislative history resource available to all Stanford University students, staff and faculty via IP-range access.

RIA Checkpoint

RIA Checkpoint is a database of authoritative U.S. tax information, which includes current as well as archival tax research materials. Included in RIA is a complete library of federal, state, local and international tax materials, as well as WG&L (Warren, Gorham & Lamont) treatises and daily updates of cases and rulings. Please inquire at the Reference Desk if you would like to set up an account.

SCC OnLine

The SCC OnLine Web Edition provides full text of India law including case law, legislation, regulations, ordinances and bills. Also included are some sources and pre-statehood material. Available to Stanford Law School users only — and requires free registration — via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

Stanford University Databases

This is an alphabetical list of many networked databases available at Stanford. Many of the resources are restricted to members of the Stanford community.

Supreme Court Records and Briefs

Provides nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs from over 150,000 cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978. Also contains full-text search capabilities to more than 350,000 documents, including appellant’s and appellee’s briefs, oral transcripts, and petitions for writ of certiorari. Access is limited to members of the Stanford community. For easy access use: Gale Group EZPROXY or EZProxy Off-campus Access under “Gale InfoTrac – Law Databases.”

TRACFED

TRACFED is a unique source of authoritative information about federal enforcement activities hosted by Syracuse University. Coverage includes all criminal matters recommended for prosecution in the federal courts and the civil income tax audits by the IRS. TRACFED allows you to enter TRAC’s massive data sets and create and order your own customized data package. Access is limited to Stanford Law School users only via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

TradeLawGuide

TradeLawGuide provides comprehensive access to WTO law, including agreements, rules of interpretation, and jurisprudence. Features include a citator, a subject navigator, full text searching, and jurisprudence pending. Access is limited to Stanford Law School users only via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

vLex

VLex’s strength is primary and secondary sources in vernacular languages from Latin America and Europe. Access is limited to Stanford Law School users only via IP range within the Stanford Law School buildings.

WESTLAW

Access to Westlaw is limited to the Stanford Law School community and requires personal, custom usernames and passwords from each, individual user. Please inquire at the Reference Desk.

*INFORMATION ABOUT THE MANDATORY WESTLAW PASSWORD CHANGE (FEBRUARY 2015) IS HERE*

Contact Information

In the Library & At Home:
West Customer Service: 1 800 850 WEST (9378)
West Reference Attorneys: 1 800 850 9378

Additional Service

West Academic Account Manager: Melissa Hagar
E-mail: melissa.hagar@thomsonreuters.com
TEL: 213 804 1570
E-mail: westlaw-help@lists.stanford.edu