1L Law Library Survival Guide

This guide provides an introduction for a new law student to the print and electronic resources in a law library. There are brief explanations of the law library and the types of legal resources.

• Survival Guide Introduction
  • Library Basics
  • Bluebook resources
  • What are Secondary Sources?
  • Primary Sources of the Law - Federal & NY
  • Court Cases - finding and research
  • What is Shepardizing?
    • Shepardizing explained

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    Shepardizing explained

    To “Shepardize” a case or statute means to use a “citator” to find out which later cases, articles, etc. have discussed the case or statute at hand. This is done by using Shepard's on Lexis, KeyCite on Westlaw or BCite on Bloomberg Law.

    Shepardizing is done for two reasons: 1) to see if your case is still good law, and 2) to find new cases on the same p oint of law.

    For help using the online citators:

    How to use BCite to validate whether a case is good law and research other cases on point.

    Select BCite from the menu on the left.

    Tutorial for using Shepards on Lexis

    How to use Westlaw's citator, KeyCite.

    You must be signed in to Westlaw to view this video.