Law Library

The Michigan Law Library is one of the world’s largest and best, with a comprehensive collection that supports study and legal research on any topic, in any country, during any period of history. Lawyer-librarians provide expert instruction in using electronic and print resources and the award-winning underground addition provides quiet, wireless-connected study space and group study rooms — and is open more hours (112 per week) than any other law library. Law students can also use the other outstanding libraries and archives on campus, and electronic resources are available remotely to Michigan students. A tour of the Law Library is also available.

Law students have University-funded computer accounts that allow broad access to computer resources, including the Internet. Students also have accounts for Lexis and Westlaw, important databases for legal material.

The Law Library provides unusually fine facilities for the use of its collection. In the fall of 1981, the Allan and Alene Smith addition to the Law Library was completed. It provides open stack shelving for that part of the collection used by J.D. students, a sufficient number of carrels to allow use by any researcher, 226 additional reader stations, special facilities for microforms, wireless access for laptops, and easily accessible professional staff. The Jackier Rare Book Room, completed in 1996, adds exceptional research resources for scholars.

The collection includes print and online access to reports of the American federal and state courts as well as the court reports of Great Britain and the Commonwealth and of most European, Asian, and South American countries. The constitutions, codes, and statutes of most foreign countries, as well as of the American states, are kept retrospectively and up-to-date. Legal documents for the United Nations, the European community, and other supra-national authorities represent a particular strength of the collection; the Library is a depository for E.U. documents and selected U.S. government documents. There are extensive special collections in the fields of Roman law, international law, comparative law, trials, biography, and legal bibliography.

The Law Library is housed in the Legal Research Building and the Smith addition. Margaret A. Leary, B.A., M.A., J.D., serves as director, and is assisted by a staff of experts in librarianship and American and foreign law: Barbara Garavaglia, A.B., M.I.L.S., J.D., head reference librarian; Suzan Burks, A.B., A.M.L.S., head technical services librarian; and Barbara J. Snow, A.B., A.M.L.S., head circulation librarian. Specialist librarians build the Library's government documents, international documents, and foreign collections. These librarians also provide assistance to students doing research assignments, seminar papers, or editing student journals. They also teach courses in Advanced Legal Research and Researching Transnational Law.