High School Students

This page sets out the services that the Bora Laskin Law Library provides to high school students and their teachers. Choose your topic from the right or simply scroll down the page.

Location and hours

Bora Laskin Law Library
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
78 Queen's Park

Students accompanied by a teacher may access the library Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. We are just south of the Museum subway stop (west side).

High school students must respect the library's rules. Keep conversations to a minimum and do not bring in food or beverages (other than bottled water or spill-proof metal travel mugs).

Library tours - information for teachers

Teachers wishing to book tours of the Law Library for their high school students should e-mail John Bolan (john.bolan@utoronto.ca) or call 416-978-3719. We typically offer a 15 to 20-minute tour of the library, highlighting the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, the Canadian Abridgment, finding textbooks and finding journals.

Please note: we will not book tours during September, from November 15th to December 30th and from March 15th to April 30th in order to minimize disruption to law students who are studying for exams. At other times, when staff are busy meeting the needs of our own students or faculty we may not be able to provide tours or give detailed attention to your students. Contact John Bolan for more information.

Photocopying and printing at the library

Copying and printing costs 10 cents per page. Our copier accepts visitors cards. Cards can be purchased at the circulation desk for $5.00 with debit or credit cards only. The cards come with a pre-loaded value of $4.25 ($0.75 charge for the card). Once you have purchased the card, you can add value to it online or at any Guest Card & Cash Loading Station.

Legal research tips for high school students

There are a number of basic steps that high school students can take to help them find law-related information for their assignments:

• Textbooks: Search our online catalogue to find a good book on your topic. Please note: this catalogue contains records of books from all campus libraries. To find books held by our library, choose "Law Library (Bora Laskin)" from the pull down menu below the search box.
• Journals: Find a good journal article on your topic by searching legal periodical indexes. See our Locating Journals page and follow the steps on that page to find journal articles.
• Encyclopedias: Use the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest to get an overview of your topic. 
• Cases: Use the Canadian Abridgment to find Canadian cases by topic. If you already have the name and citation to a Canadian case, find the full-text of the case by retrieving the appropriate case law reporter (we have abbreviation dictionaries at the reference desk that help decipher the abbreviations for case law reporters used in the citation to the case). Note up your case (alphabetically by case name) using the red Canadian Case Citations to see if your case was appealed or to see how other subsequent courts may have interpreted your cases.
• Legislation: If you need to find statutes or regulations, consider searching on the Internet using our link to Canadian legislation. If you need to find older statutes, ask for help searching for Canadian legislation in print. 

Other law libraries in the GTA

If you are not able to make it to our library, you might consider doing your research at the York University Law Library (4700 Keele Street). Alternatively, the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, just north of Bloor Street) has some law-related material that may be of use to high school students.