The mission of the Bora Laskin Law Library is to partner proactively with the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in pursuing excellence in education, advancing outstanding legal scholarship and bringing about positive changes to the law. To that end, we provide comprehensive access to legal information relevant to the research and instructional needs and goals of the Faculty of Law, through a synthesis of innovative services, integrated collections, effective instruction, and creative use of technology.
InfoEXPRESS | Contact: InfoEXPRESS
InfoEXPRESS is the Bora Laskin Law Library's premium research and resource delivery service, for the exclusive use of the faculty members, doctoral candidates, distinguished visiting scholars and staff at this Law School. InfoEXPRESS obtains books, articles, cases, legislation, and other materials from the Law Library, other campus libraries, via inter-library loan from other universities in Ontario, Canada, the United States and around the world, and delivers the requested material directly to its users.
Summer RA Library Research Instructional Program | Contacts: John Bolan, Sooin Kim, Alexia Loumankis, Alexandra Kwan
The librarians run the Summer RA Library Research Instructional Program, each May to August. This comprehensive program includes an orientation, a series of classes related to researching primary and secondary sources of law, and several vendor-led, advanced database instruction sessions. In addition to providing RAs in this program with dedicated space in the Law Library, and enhanced access privileges and circulation services, library staff are available throughout the summer to provide ongoing research-related consultations and administrative support.
On-Demand Research Assistants | Contact: Alexia Loumankis
A pool of law student research assistants is available to assist faculty with short-term research projects throughout the academic year. RAs work directly with the faculty member to work out the scope of the research and to communicate the results of their research; the Reference & Research Librarian is available to provide guidance and consultations. The students are paid from the individual faculty member’s research funds.
Research Instruction | Contact: Alexia Loumankis, Alexandra Kwan, John Bolan
Legal Research & Writing Program: The LRW program introduces students to the practice of law. In partnership with adjunct faculty, the law librarians provide in-person/synchronous/asynchronous instruction for essential research components of this mandatory first year course, including researching secondary sources, case law, legislation, and rules of proper legal citation. The librarians are also available for reference and research consultations.
Small Groups: The Head of Instructional Services provides legal research training for Small Group courses, ideally timed to align with the 1L students’ first written assignments. The customized sessions teach students how to formulate sound research strategies and highlight the most relevant resources/research tools needed to successfully complete research assignments. Follow-up research instruction sessions are available upon request.
Journal Editors: The Head of Instructional Services is embedded into the Journal: Law and Equality Seminar, to provide advanced research instruction to student editors. These lessons help the editors to become sufficiently knowledgeable about an area of law to effectively assess its scholarship and be able to evaluate the sound research and original contribution behind journal article submissions. In addition, the law librarians support the senior and associate editors of the student-run peer-review Faculty of Law journals through consultative and training services.
Programs and Clinics: IHRP, Asper Center, WHRR: Librarians provide customized legal research training for students involved in the Faculty of Law’s many clinics and programs, to support their work.
Customized legal research sessions for upper-year courses and LLMs, and SJD candidates are available upon request.
Syllabus Service | Contact: Sooin Kim
As part of the service, law librarians evaluates course materials and assist faculty to make readings available to their students, while respecting Canadian copyright law and the university’s fair dealing guidelines. We strive to supply instructors with the all the required readings they need to teach their course. For required materials that U of T does not own, or that exceed the allowable copyright limits we work with the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office to suggest alternate sources, seek appropriate permissions, or purchase transactional licences.
Syllabi are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. Please submit your final Fall 2024 syllabus by Friday, November 29, 2024.
Research Guides | Contact: John Bolan, Alexia Loumankis
The library staff create research guides that highlight core and leading texts and other important information on subject-specific resources. Research guides can be crafted for requested topics.
Course Reserves | Contact: Anna Szot-Sacawa
Library staff places into the Short-Term Loan (3-hours) collection materials identified as core/required reading. To facilitate this process, please provide us with the publication information (author, title, edition, publisher, and year of publication), along with an indication of the semester(s) the materials will be used. Wherever possible, the Law Library will purchase the required materials (in print or online) if it is not currently in our collection.
Past Exams Database | Contact: Alexandra Kwan
The Law Library maintains a database of Law School course examinations dating back to 2011 (e.legal login required). Pre-2011 Exams are available in print only and may be requested at the Circulation Desk. Call Number KF292 .T64 U54 (Course Reserves).
Electronic Resources | Contact: Alexandra Kwan
Our Legal Databases provides the law school community access to all online subscriptions purchased by the Library and free legal research sites. A wide range of treatises published by WestlawNext Canada and Lexis Advance Quicklaw, and loose-leaf services on Proview, have been compiled, according to the subject area. The Law Library also maintains a list of books from the current First Year and Upper Year Course Reading Lists that are available online. Please let us know if you would like an e-book added to your course readings.
Resource Delivery | Contact: Sufei Xu
The Access Services Coordinator sources out needed books/journal articles/other materials to which the University of Toronto Library system does not have access, for InfoEXPRESS and for law students. Through an Interlibrary Loan Request Form on LibrarySearch, catalogs of institutions around the world are searched and requests for a copies are made to view, borrow or download the needed items. Electronic materials are typically delivered to your inbox within a few days, while physical materials may take longer depending on the location of the lending institution. Please note that users must be signed in with their UTorid.
Contact: InfoEXPRESS
New Books in the Library
The Law Library maintains a monthly list of new acquisitions. Newly purchased print books and journal issues are also available for viewing for a short period in the 4th floor faculty lounge. If you would like to borrow a new book or have an article/chapter scanned, please e-mail us, or fill out the request forms that have been placed in the faculty lounge for your convenience.
InfoEXPRESS Extra
InfoEXPRESS Extra is a newsletter created to provide our Faculty with information about library news & services, resources, new acquisitions and more.
Current Canadian Law Journals and Reviews
The Current Canadian Law Journals and Reviews includes full-text access to the most recent volumes/issues of Canadian law journals and reviews, as provided by the three major legal publishers and open access sources. Please note that some titles are restricted to University of Toronto users or the law school community.
HeinOnline’s CILP & SmartCILP
Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) indexes, by subject heading, the most recent issues of more than 650 legal publications. It is a weekly list of recently published legal articles, organized within 104 relevant subject headings.
SmartCILP is a powerful current awareness tool for legal scholars, providing tailored alerts delivered via email as a personalized supplement to the weekly CILP issue. All SmartCILP notifications include full text linking to HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. To create a SmartCILP profile, please see follow these instructions.
Most legal research databases include an “alerts” feature. Law librarians can help faculty set up customized notifications about newly added content and recent developments in law.
Author Profiles | Contact: Sooin Kim, Alexia Loumankis
The Law Library is continuously expanding its faculty scholarship support services in an effort to feature the scholarly works produced here at the Faculty.
The University’s Author Profile Page on HeinOnline displays publications, biographical information, ScholarCheck statistics of participating scholars in one place; it is a great way to promote the legal scholarship at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.
The Law librarians also support faculty to integrate their HeinOnline author profiles with the broader ORCID platform, which provides a unique, persistent identifier to distinguish researchers across all disciplines, and allows them to showcase their research outputs and activities.
If you would like your author profile to be included, updated, or integrated, please let us know.
TSpace | Contact: Sooin Kim
TSpace is a free and secure institutional research repository established by University of Toronto Libraries to disseminate and preserve the scholarly record of the University of Toronto community. Within this space, a sub collection provides open access to, and preserves the intellectual output of, the Faculty of Law. Law librarians can help with depositing publications to TSpace.