For those of you who are struggling with the rules of legal citation, the Law Library maintains a quick reference guide to the Bluebook. The guide includes an introduction to the Bluebook and its structure, as well as explanations of how to cite the most common legal materials, including cases, statutes and treatises. These explanations include references to the applicable Bluebook rules, to help you navigate this often confusing citation manual.

We've put together a new research guide that provides links to the Student Practice Rules adopted by both Federal and State courts. These rules authorize eligible law students to practice law under the supervision of a practicing attorney. All 50 states have such a rule. Some are codified in the state statutes. Others are included in local court rules, while others are state bar rules.

Some law review articles that analyze these rules and student practice, in general, are also included in the new guide.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions regarding our new guide.

       Many scholars have followed the decline in law as an autonomous discipline.  Now, many research inquiries into the law also require serious research in other disciplines like economics, history, sociology or psychology.  To help students researching in areas outside of traditional legal research, the library has created a Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Guide to point students to resources available through the Georgetown University Law Library as well as the Georgetown University Library.  Aside from pointing students to general social science databases, the guide is also broken down to offer specific research advice in particular social science disciplines. 

    As always, let us know if you have additional thoughts about information that should be included on the research guide. 

The law library has created a new guide to free and low-cost sources of legal materials on the Internet. While our law students and alumni are mostly familiar with Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw, they are usually not familiar with the alternatives to these expensive databases. This new guide is designed to introduce them to the services available, and assist them in determining whether the less expensive options meet their needs. Our goal with this guide is to help our students and alumni become better and more cost-effective researchers in the long run. Please take a look and feel free to suggest any other online sources.

If you're tracking the new administration's nominees, check out the law library's new Executive Nomination Process Research Guide. It will guide you through the nomination and confirmation process, highlight secondary sources on the process and link to sites for the Senate hearings which will be held in the new year.

The link to news sources allows you to survey the media's coverage of the executive transition.

The law library has created a new research guide for bankruptcy law. Like our other research guides, it lists major primary and secondary sources that are useful in researching bankruptcy issues. Both print and online sources are listed, and links are provides to databases and records in the GULLiver catalog, to make it easy to find the resources you need.

CiteGenie, a new extension for the Firefox browser, promises to make the Bluebooking process easier and faster, at least when using Westlaw. LLRX has a review of the product and its features, and you can download the extension at citegenie.com.

Remember that tools like this are not foolproof (we've already found some problems with CiteGenie) and that law students and lawyers still need to learn and understand how to use the Bluebook.

Did you know that law students do not generally have access to Lexis and Westlaw during the summer?

However, if you are in a summer academic program, working on a school project, working at a non-profit or unpaid internship, or studying for the bar exam, you may qualify for enhanced access.  Use the links below to register and for more information.

• LexisNexis Summer Access Program (for all summer access information)
  
• Westlaw
  
  • Academic, Non-Profit & Internship use (you will be required to sign in to access the form)
  • Bar Prep Access, sign on and click the banner ad on the right promoting
    the graduate survey and password extension program. Complete the survey and extend your
    password.