Other Visitors

Reference services are available to help direct patrons to information and resources that may answer their questions or aid in their research. Be advised that library policy prohibits reference employees from doing research for patrons or answering specific legal questions; however, they can direct patrons to relevant sources and give instruction on their use. 

The physical Reference Desk is located on the main floor of the Library, and reference services are also offered virtually. Reference services are provided by both full-time law library faculty members and part-time law student reference assistants. If you need a full-time librarian’s assistance, you should make an appointment to guarantee their availability by emailing reference@law.byu.edu. Simply state in the email that you would like an appointment with a librarian, what your research need is, and a few times (between 9am and 5pm Monday through Friday) that would work for you to have the appointment.

For reference hours, see here. 

The following are methods for contacting the reference employees virtually:

Email

You may email us your reference question or schedule an appointment at reference@law.byu.edu. For public patrons, we will attempt to answer reference questions within two business days, and we remind you that we cannot offer legal advice; we can provide answers to brief, factual research questions and resource inquiries. For example, we can help identify and locate legal materials or provide guidance in using legal resources or tools.

Call

To receive reference services by talking with a reference employee over the phone, call 801-422-6658. If a reference employee does not answer, feel free to leave a voicemail because it is checked regularly.

The BYU Law Library employees, both the full-time librarians and the law student part-time assistants, cannot offer legal advice. We are also not practicing attorneys and cannot take on your case and cannot contact attorneys on your behalf. We are here to connect you with legal resources that we have in our library and can provide you guidance in using them. You will have to use the resources yourself and determine what may or may not help you with your research or legal problem.

We have a web page where we keep a list of free and low-cost legal resources in Utah that we are made aware of. You may peruse that page, and some of those resources will have attorneys that you may contact. Here is the link: https://guides.law.byu.edu/legal-resources. We are not affiliated with any of the resources on this web page, and you will want to contact the resource directly to confirm the accuracy of information.

We have a web page where we keep a list of free and low-cost legal resources in Utah that we are made aware of. You may peruse that page, and some of those resources will have attorneys that you may contact. Here is the link: https://guides.law.byu.edu/legal-resources. We are not affiliated with any of the resources on this web page, and you will want to contact the resource directly to confirm the accuracy of information.

Westlaw Patron Access is a version of Westlaw open to the public. It is available on two of the three computers that are currently open to the public near the Reference Desk. Westlaw Patron Access allows access to all federal and state cases and statutes, KeyCite, ALR, and AmJur (plus many different parts of the AmJur series, like Forms and Causes of Action).

Use of the Patron Access terminal is limited to 30 minutes when someone else is waiting.

Patrons who visit the Law Library in person can access some Law Library electronic resources, such as Westlaw, depending on our contract with the database vendor. Public access to many main campus (Lee Library) databases is also available to visitors in the Law Library. For questions about access to specific databases, please contact Reference Services. Remote (from home) access to Law Library databases is not available to visitors, although some databases are available remotely to Utah attorneys and BYU Law alumni. For information about access to HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library for BYU Law alumni, click here. For information about access to the LexisNexis Digital Library (Lexis treatises such as Nimmer on Copyright, the Utah Code Annotated, and more) for Utah attorneys and BYU Law alumni, click here.

The Utah Court Briefs collection contains public record briefs submitted to the Utah Supreme Court and Utah Court of Appeals and supplied to the University of Utah and BYU Law Libraries by the Courts for the purposes of legal scholarship and academic research. The Law Libraries offer this collection as a public service encouraged by the Utah Courts. For additional information, please contact the Repository Administrator at hunterlawlibrary@byu.edu.

Researchers unfamiliar with legal procedure may learn more via the US Courts, Utah Courts, and other internet resources. These sites also provide additional information:

• Utah Self Help Resources (for parties representing themselves)
• Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure
• Federal Rules of Practice and Procedure

The judicial opinions (case decisions) based on the briefs in this Digital Commons collection may often be found at the Utah Courts website or by using the Google Scholar case law search. Basic legal research information is available through the BYU Law Library’s libguides, as well as the BYU and UofU Law Libraries’ onsite print and electronic resources (click the library links for details about library programs, resources, reference hours, and directions). Reference assistance is available for visitors to both libraries.

The Law Library has access to Xchange, which is a Utah-government-owned and created database that provides access to Utah state district (trial) court dockets and documents, including traffic citations in Utah. 

How to Access Xchange at the BYU Law Library

If you are not a law student or faculty, you may access Xchange on one of the three legal research computers on the main floor of the Law Library by the Reference Desk. There is an icon on the desktop of these legal research computers for Xchange. It looks like this:

When you click the icon, login credentials will need to be entered in so that you can log in, and you’ll need to ask an employee at the Reference Desk to log you in. Reference hours are listed here so that you know when a good time to come into the library is.

Other Places to Access Xchange 

Patrons can call their local Utah state district court buildings to see if they have a Public Access Xchange Terminal. The law library at the University of Utah has free access, as well as the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City.

Members of the public are welcome to use the library and its resources on the second (main) floor of the library. Materials can be retrieved from the first and third floors, but tables, study rooms, Zoom booths, and carrels on these floors are restricted to current law students, faculty, and staff.

Step 1: Find the book listed in our law library website’s search (“the catalog”).  

Step 2: Write down or take a picture of the collection name, the call number, and any further information listed. Example: 

In the picture above, the collection name is “Law Library Main Collection,” the call number is “K 3258 .D874 2010”, and the further information is that it is available on the 3rd floor. The main collection is–you guessed it–our main collection and what most of our shelves are a part of. 

Step 3: Check the map (link here) to see more or less where it will be and then go scouting. The ends of the shelves have labels to say which call numbers are down that aisle and they are all alphabetically and then numerically in order.

Step 4: You either successfully found the book (yay!), or you may need to ask Reference Services for help. You can call (801) 422-6658, email reference@law.byu.edu, or visit the physical Reference Desk on the second floor (which is the main floor of the law library) for help. A link to the book on our website is always helpful to share with them. For reference hours, see here. 

Note: Most call numbers for law library books begin with KF, which is the category for “law.” So any call number in the main collection before KF is in the northwest corner of the 3rd floor of the law library. Anything after KF tends to be on the 1st floor (the basement floor) of the law library. 

For other collection names besides “Law Library Main Collection,” the green information will tell you which floor it is on. You may also want to ask Reference Services for help on finding where that collection may be located.

NOTE: We are undergoing renovation in some library areas. Please contact Circulation/ILL to request any item that is unavailable.

First Floor (basement)

Second Floor (main)

Third Floor

Students and faculty of Utah universities and colleges whose libraries are members of the Utah Academic Library Consortium may check materials out from the Law Library after setting up a Community Patron Account. Please contact Melanie Coleman for information on how to set up an account. Circulating items check-out for 3 weeks.

Members of the general public may not borrow materials but are welcome to use Law Library resources while on the premises. We provide scanners for patron use.

Materials located in the Rare Book Room are available to patrons from 8am-5pm, Monday through Friday. Patrons, including BYU faculty, should contact the Reference Desk for help accessing materials from the Rare Book Room. A librarian will locate the book and bring it to the patron in the Law Library Reserve Room next to the Circulation Desk. Patrons are not permitted to remove any items from the Rare Book Room from the Reserve Room. The book will be checked out to the patron during use. Patrons must return all materials from the Rare Book Room to the circulation clerk when finished.

The BYU Law Digital Repository contains open access copies of the scholarly works of Law School faculty, annual reports and other official publications, and the online archives of the various legal journals published at BYU Law.

Open-access consortia seek to make high-quality academic work available throughout the world at minimal cost to students, academics and scholars of all levels. The full archives of the BYU Law Review, BYU Journal of Public Law, BYU Education and Law Journal, and BYU International Law & Management Review are available through the Law Review Commons. Other publications such as the Clark Memorandum, Advocate (and annual reports), Life in the Law and the scholarly works published by Law School Faculty are all accessible to researchers through the more-expansive Law Commons. The Digital Commons network includes works from all areas of scholarly and academic inquiry, and contains millions of individual articles produced at hundreds of universities.

The Library has installed a limited number of legal research computers near reference for general public access. Resources such as Westlaw Patron Access and HeinOnline are available, as well as selected CCH and ProQuest Databases. Please ask a reference librarian for assistance in using these resources.

Please be aware that we no longer have public-access printers, so results need to be saved to email or a USB drive.

The Law Library does not have any printers available for public patrons. The Law Library provides document scanners, which allow the option of saving a document as a PDF to save and print at home, for use by the BYU Law school community and for use by public patrons who are scanning library materials. If you need an on campus printing option, BYU has several Print Centers or Printer Kiosks across campus. 

The Y App can help you find the closest pharos printer. The Print and Mail website provides more information about these options. 

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The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The person using the equipment is liable for any infringement.

Please note that scanning all or even a substantial portion of a book in order to avoid purchasing a copy is not a Fair Use (see § 107(4)).

Scanned PDFs may be saved to USB flash drives, uploaded to cloud-based systems like your own Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox account, or emailed using web-based accounts such as Yahoo or Gmail.

Scanner Locations

The Law Library currently has:

• two KIC Bookeye open-face scanners (the newer one near the Reference Desk and the older one in the Reserve Room);
• four flatbed book scanners (2 near the Reference Desk on the 2nd floor, 1 in the Reserve Room, and 1 on the 3rd floor near the Rex E. Lee room); and
• two multi-page feed scanners (1 near the wall that at the end of the table has the reference co-op printer and another on the 3rd floor near the Rex E. Lee room).

Employees at the Circulation and Reference are trained and ready to assist anyone in the BYU Law community who needs help with scanning and anyone from the public who needs help scanning library materials.

Microform

Copies of documents on microform can be made as digital scans on the public computer in the Microform area (first floor). Patrons may email those scans on that computer to themselves.

The law library does not offer printing services for BYU students that are not affiliated with the law school or public patrons. Please visit the Lee Library or Cougar Creations for your printing needs.

BYU Law provides Co-Op printers for BYU Law students. To learn more about the cost, how to install it and use it, see the BYU Law page on Co-Op printing.