Law Library Research: Introductory Training for LLM Students

This site provides a brief introductory video training course on research at the Harvard Law School Library for incoming LLM students. This video training course will orient you to the library's services and materials. 

Please watch all of the videos in this course and complete the self-assessment quiz by September 5th.  

This brief online-only course consists of the following short videos.  They provide a basic introduction to how research works in the Harvard Law School Library.  You can watch the entire video series in less than an hour.  

1. The Law Library Website: Library Services and Subscription Database Links (6:13)
2. The HOLLIS Library Catalog (5:43)
3. Using HOLLIS to find LLM Papers from Prior Years (5:27)
4. Finding an LLM Paper Topic (6:55)
5. Bluebook Legal Citation System (6:09)
6. Preemption Checking (5:55)
7. Perma: Making Permanent Links for your LLM Paper (4:38)

Each video has captions. If you want to read the words as they are spoken, click the CC icon in the video window.

Below is an outline of the course, listing and describing each video and providing links to the online resources discussed.  Please download this outline and read it carefully before watching the videos.

The law library's website (https://hls.harvard.edu/library/) should be the first place you go to find information about the library and how to find and access research materials, including subscription legal databases.  

The video mentions three subscription databases that you need to register for separately: Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg.  You will receive an email from librarian Catherine Biondo about how to register for these databases. 

For more information about these databases, including links to training materials for them, visit https://guides.library.harvard.edu/HLSLexisWestlawBloombergLawTraining. 

HOLLIS (https://hollis.harvard.edu/) is the library catalog for all of Harvard's libraries, including the law library.  To be an effective researcher at Harvard, you must learn how to use HOLLIS.

This video show you how to use HOLLIS (https://hollis.harvard.edu) to find prior years' LLM papers in the library's collection.

The ability to find LLM papers submitted by prior HLS students is a very important skill for LLM students to know.  This information can give you ideas about the types of topics that were written about successfully, in terms of both subject matter and scope.  It can also give you a good indication of which professors have supervised which subject areas.

This video introduces you to the library's tips for finding an LLM paper topic, which you can read about at https://guides.library.harvard.edu/findingapapertopic. Topics covered include blogs, current awareness services, searching in academic journals, and finding a faculty advisor.

This video introduces you to the Bluebook system of legal citation, which is the primary citation system used in legal scholarship in the United States.  For more information about the Bluebook, visit our Bluebook guide at https://guides.library.harvard.edu/bluebook-guide.

Preemption checking means gaining a well-informed idea of what has already been published about your LLM paper topic.  You will need to do this to ensure that your contribution to the scholarly conversation on this topic is original and does not duplicate what another scholar has already said.  This video explains more about how preemption checking works.

Perma is a service provided by the HLS Library's Library Information Lab that allows you to make permanent links for pages on publicly-accessible websites that you cite in your LLM paper.  This video introduces Perma and explains how to use it.

2024 LL.M Students:

This mandatory quiz is designed to help you assess your mastery of the materials presented in these videos. Please complete the quiz by September 5th 2023. 

Here are the answers to some of the more frequently-asked questions that we get in the library that may require some clarification beyond what you watched in the videos.

Question #1: Can I use HOLLIS to look for journal articles?

Answer: Yes!  Remember, if you do a "Library Catalog" search in HOLLIS, the search results will not include articles.  Instead, do an "Everything" search.  This will return articles from all kinds of publications, including scholarly journals and newspapers. 

Note that the easiest way to limit a search results list in HOLLIS to only scholarly journal articles is to click "Peer-Reviewed Articles" under the Show Only menu on the right side of the screen.

Question #2: What do I do if I need a book that Harvard doesn't have, or an article from a journal to which Harvard does not subscribe?

Answer: It's true, the Harvard Library does not have every single book and journal ever published (although we do have a lot!). 

If you need a book or journal article and you can't seen to access it through HOLLIS (or if you are asked to pay money for it), you're welcome to email a research librarian at research@law.harvard.edu.  We're happy to take a quick look as well. 

Usually if a HOLLIS record says "How to Get It," as shown below, that is a good indication that we don't have the thing you're looking at.

In this case, you will need to do an InterLibrary Loan (ILL) request to get it from another library.  Scroll to the bottom of the HOLLIS record and click the InterLibrary Loan link.

Fill out the online form that is displayed, providing as much information about the book or article as you can.

If you need help, you can ask at the circulation desk.

Question #3: Does Harvard offer access to a content management system, like Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote?  How about training?

As a Harvard student, you have free access to Zotero.  For more information about how to get it and set it up on your computer, as well as the PowerPoint presentation from the law library's Zotero training class from last year, visit https://guides.library.harvard.edu/LLMSJD-ZoteroTraining.

Note that Zotero does have an option for Bluebook citations, but it generally performs poorly when creating them.  Therefore, you should not expect to rely on it to create correct citations for your LLM paper.

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