Electronic Legal Research

LexisNexis and Westlaw: Summer Policies and Options

Student access to LexisNexis and Westlaw is governed by our academic subscription contracts, which prohibit research use of these systems in conjunction with paid employment.  As a result, students’ use of LexisNexis and Westlaw passwords will automatically become limited on June 1st.

Each year LexisNexis and Westlaw face greater competition from other electronic research vendors.  This year, Bloomberg Law and Fastcase offer students unrestricted summer access to legal research databases that are comparable to LexisNexis’s and Westlaw’s.  As a result, this summer’s LexisNexis and Westlaw student access policies are more liberal than they were in previous years.

If you want to use LexisNexis or Westlaw for research this summer, for qualified academic uses, you must register on their Websites to extend your passwords.  It would be a good idea for you to register now, to ensure that these services are there when you need them.

We have compiled the details of all the vendors’ policies, registration procedures, and research options into one handy page.  Please visit: http://www.nyls.edu/library/for_students/extend_passwords.

Introducing Fastcase

The Library is happy to announce the addition of Fastcase to the long list of electronic resources we offer the NYLS community.

Comparable in many ways to Lexis and Westlaw, Fastcase is a legal research service providing full-text searchable access to comprehensive libraries of federal and state cases, statutes, constitutions, court rules, administrative regulations, and attorney general opinions.  The robust service has recently expanded to offer libraries of newspapers, federal court filings, and legal forms.

Unlike Lexis and Westlaw, Fastcase will not restrict student access to its research libraries in June.  You’ll be able to use Fastcase libraries all summer long, at your job or for any other purpose.  Fastcase also offers excellent free apps for your iPhone and iPad, facilitating research on the fly.

It’s worth your while to check out Fastcase!  One easy way to get started is to sign up for one of their free webinars.  You’ll find a complete list here.

Try the Enhanced Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) is now accessible through HeinOnline with the added benefit of direct linking to many articles.  Give it a try!

The IFLP indexes nearly 300,000 articles and book reviews across more than 500 periodicals.  Links to the full text of more than 34,000 items are available.  The IFLP covers public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia.

TAX BNA Training

If you are taking any tax classes or are interested in tax law,  you may want to sign up to learn about the BNA Tax and Accounting Center.  BNA offers the very popular Tax Management Portfolios with in depth discussion and references to tax primary sources.  Portfolios are available on a variety of topics ranging from Doing Business in Brazil to Golden Parachutes.  BNA provides access to primary sources as well as detailed analysis of tax issues in the areas of U.S. Income, Federal Estates and Gifts, and Foreign and International Tax.  Classes will be taught by Tome Tanevski, an attorney editor of the BNA Tax Management Portfolios.

When:  Thursday Oct. 20  6:00-6:50
Where:  Library Room L206
Sign up:  Send email to Rosalie Sanderson at rsanderson@nyls.edu

Don’t miss this great opportunity!!

 

TAX CCH Intelliconnect Training

Are you interested in tax law?  Don’t pass up the opportunity to learn how to use one of the premier electronic tax research systems:  CCH Intelliconnect.  This system gives you access to all primary sources for tax law, plus detailed explanations.  The system is organized by Internal Revenue Code section but allows you to do Boolean searching as well.  Learn how to find Internal Revenue Code sections, regulations, tax cases, tax rulings and much, much more.

When:  Thursday Oct. 13  6:00-6:50
Where:  Library Room L206
Sign up:  Send email to Rosalie Sanderson at rsanderson@nyls.edu
Don’t miss this great opportunity!!

 

 

Bloomberg Law Training Sessions

Bloomberg Law is offering a series of trainings on how to use Bloomberg Law to search for various content types.  If you are a 1L, these trainings satisfy the Research Skills Workshops component of your Legal Practice Course requirement.

The current schedule of training classes is as follows:

Finding and Researching Administrative Regulations on Bloomberg Law (B5)

Oct 11 — 12:50 pm — 1:40 pm (Tuesday)
Oct 14 — 2:00 pm — 2:50 pm (Friday)

Finding and Researching Statutes on Bloomberg Law (B4)

Oct 12 — 1:00 pm — 1:50 pm (Wednesday)

Formulating Effective Searches on Bloomberg Law (B2)

Oct 15 — 12:30 — 1:20 pm (Saturday)

All classes will be held in the Mendik Library in L207.

Please contact Omesh Seemangal (contact information below) if you would like to reserve a spot for one of the above listed dates.  Bloomberg Law may add more dates as needed.

 

Omesh V. Seemangal, Esq.
Law School Relationship Manager Bloomberg L.P.
oseemangal@bloomberg.net
(212) 617-6632 (Phone)
(917) 369-66587 (Fax)

www.Bloomberglaw.com

 

Learn to Use BNA Online for Legal Research

BNA, a leading legal publisher used extensively by practicing attorneys, can be a valuable component in your legal research toolbox.  Don’t miss these opportunities to learn how to use it effectively. No preregistration is required for any of the 45-minute sessions.

Legal Research Using BNA

Students will learn how to conduct legal research using BNA online resources. Using BNA’s current awareness services, students will learn how to recognize emerging legal trends, locate paper topics, and sign up for e-mail alerts in subject areas of interest. Using BNA’s online Web libraries, students will gain an in-depth exposure to specific sources such as tax, labor and employment law, and intellectual property law, and will gain an understanding of how to use these secondary sources of law to conduct comprehensive legal research.

Friday September 23rd at 11:00 am – 11:45 am
Tuesday September 27th at 11:00 am – 11:45 am
Room L206

Federal Tax Research with BNA Tax Management Portfolios

Participants will learn how to use BNA’s Tax and Accounting Center (BTAC) — an all-in-one resource—to get the complete answer to any federal tax question quickly.  Learn how to use a variety of search methods, including code section or word searching, and how to use BNA’s topical indexes. The Tax and Accounting Center fully integrates all BNA Federal Tax Management Portfolios— US Income, Estate Gifts & Trusts, Foreign — as well as news and analysis in the Tax Management Weekly Report and primary sources.

Friday September 23rd at 12 noon – 12:45 pm
Tuesday September 27th at 12:00 noon – 12:45 pm
Room L206

 

Free Federal Rules Ebooks

Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), in partnership with the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), now offers free electronic versions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence.  These electronic files become ebooks when viewed on a Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, or any other device that supports .epub or .mobi files.

The federal rules ebooks include the text of the rules and the Advisory Committee notes.  They support handy electronic features such as internal hyperlinks and external links to the LII website’s version of the US Code.

To download these ebooks, visit http://elangdell.cali.org/content/federal-rules-ebooks-legal-information-institute.  You’ll find links and complete tech help instructions on that site.

 

Bloomberg Law Training Sessions

Bloomberg Law is offering additional introductory training sessions to New York Law School students on July 6, 13, and 20. These 45-minute sessions will introduce BLAW’s newly released legal and financial services research platform, which integrates primary legal research and Bloomberg’s news, company information and analytics into one reliable resource. Features that will be covered include:

* B-Cite, Bloomberg’s legal citation tool
* Bloomberg Law Reports for current awareness articles on legal developments contributed by leading lawyers
* Company Due Diligence & transactional database
* Dockets as a litigation tool

All classes will meet in room L-207 in the library and will run from 5:15 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Please email oribe@bloomberg.net (Pamela Haahr) to sign up to attend.

Bloomberg Law Training

Representatives from Bloomberg are now offering a variety of introductory, advanced, and specialized training sessions for “Bloomberg Law,” an online legal search tool now available to law firms and law schools.  Details of the training, including the schedule for March and April, are set out below:

Bloomberg Law is pleased to present ongoing training sessions to New York Law School students.  We are offering a mix of Introductory as well as Advanced sessions that will help prepare either summer associates or outgoing graduates for a variety of opportunities. Each session runs approximately 40-50 minutes.

To sign up please email oribe@bloomberg.net with the sessions & times.

Introductory Sessions:  Learn the basic navigation and data coverage of Bloomberg Law which is used by AmLaw firms for current case law, legal commentary, news, and business intelligence.

Advanced Sessions:

~ Corporate and Securities Transactions:  Legal and Business research at an advanced level for students heading to financial institutions and the law firms that support them.

~ Legal Research:  Advanced training for litigators:  Bloomberg Law has

every published state and federal case & commentary to teach you everything from Banking Law to White Collar Crime.

~ Due Diligence: Learn how to perform the due diligence research necessary for transactional and bankruptcy work in corporate law firms.

~ Dodd-Frank Demystified: Learn how to research Dodd-Frank, the biggest statutory and regulatory overhaul of the securities industry since Sarbanes-Oxley.

~ Bloomberg for Summers: Get a head start with the newest legal research tool and let us help prepare you with free access for the entire summer.

March 2011

INTRO TO BLOOMBERG LAW:
March 7th:  1pm, 5pm
March 15th: 1pm, 4pm
March 24th: 1pm, 5pm, 6pm

ADVANCED BLOOMBERG LAW: CORPORATE & SECURITIES LAW
March 8th: 12pm, 5pm
March 16th: 1pm, 6pm

ADVANCED BLOOMBERG LAW: LITIGATION
March 17th: 5pm, 6pm

ADVANCED BLOOMBERG LAW: PERFORMING DUE DILIGENCE WITH BLOOMBERG LAW
March 9th: 1pm, 5pm
March 15th: 5pm, 6pm

DODD-FRANK DEMYSTIFIED
March 14th: 5pm 6pm

April 2011
INTRO TO BLOOMBERG LAW:
April 5th: 12pm, 5pm

USING BLOOMBERG LAW FOR THE SUMMER: CORPORATE & SECURITIES LAW
April 6th: 1pm, 5pm
April 12th: 1pm, 5pm

 

USING BLOOMBERG LAW FOR THE SUMMER: LITIGATION & DOCKETS!
April 5th: 1pm, 6pm
April 13th: 1pm, 6pm

 

USING BLOOMBERG LAW FOR THE SUMMER:  PERFORMING DUE DILIGENCE WITH BLOOMBERG LAW
April 6th: 12pm, 6pm
April 14th: 12pm, 5pm