Research Support

Law faculty have 24-hour access to the collection with their campus ID card.

General Library Schedule

Library liaisons are assigned to each full-time law school faculty member. These liaisons act as intermediaries between the Law Library and the faculty. Liaisons meet with their assigned faculty regularly to determine individual library needs and research interests. They also ensure that faculty members are aware of library services and collections and seek suggestions regarding how library services can be improved. Library liaisons are available to assist faculty members with their research needs. They obtain library material for faculty members and arrange for other library services that are needed or requested.

Specific services might include:

• obtaining law review articles
• making interlibrary loan requests (or you can contact Melanie Coleman at colemanm@law.byu.edu)
• forwarding purchase requests for approval and ordering
• setting up automated current awareness accounts (such as SmartCILP, Lexis/Nexis alerts, Westlaw’s WestClip and SSRN/LSN subscriptions)
• creating coversheets for scholarly works to be posted on SSRN
• uploading scholarly works to SSRN on behalf of the faculty member
• presenting research classes on subjects taught by the faculty member
• working with faculty research assistants
• compiling citations to the faculty member’s scholarly works

Liaison Assignments

The Law Library employs law student reference assistants to assist law faculty with their research needs. These law students provide support for law faculty who either do not have enough ongoing work to justify hiring their own research assistants or need assistance beyond their own research assistants. The reference assistants are meant to complement, not replace, individual faculty research assistants. The reference assistants work primarily on research requests and, if there is time available, data projects that require the student research assistant have at least one year of law school. The law student reference assistants are supervised by Annalee Hickman Pierson. Faculty who need assistance are encouraged to contact their library liaison.

In addition to providing research support to law school faculty, the reference assistants also provide reference services to library users virtually and in-person at the Law Library. 

Data project support is a faculty service the Law Library provides to law faculty. The support is provided by data assistants (undergraduate BYU students), who collect data and/or enter data that does not require being a law student or having any legal knowledge or background. The data assistants also work on data projects supporting corpus linguistics. The data assistants are hired, trained, and managed by the Data Project Manager, Teresa Odam. Faculty requests for data project support may be made through library liaisons who will coordinate with the Data Project Manager to ensure the carrying out and completion of the requested data project.

The reference assistants will continue to provide support for data projects that require some legal knowledge or background learned through the first-year legal research and writing program in law school, though traditional research requests may receive higher priority. More information about what the reference assistants can do for law faculty can be found here.

The Law Library faculty are available to work with and train law faculty research assistants in the process of legal research and to suggest research strategies for particular research projects. Contact your library liaison for individual training for your research assistant(s) any time through the year. General summer RA training takes place shortly after Winter semester. Contact Shawn Nevers for more information. Law Professors are also welcome to send their RAs to class sessions of Advanced Legal Research, scheduled during Winter semester. For the syllabus or more information, contact Shawn Nevers at (801) 422-8784 or neverss@law.byu.edu.