Law - Introduction

Reading Lists

Your Lecturer is the person who can best recommend the essential reading for your unit. Your reading lists will give you your key textbooks and articles. If you are confused by the language and abbreviations take a look at Getting Started with Law which is designed to help.

It is important that you discover how to find and use the primary law sources as soon as possible. The best sources for these are LexisLibrary and Westlaw each offer access to primary law sources as cases and legislation updated on a daily basis with an enormous amount of additional commentary around them. It is worthwhile investing time in getting comfortable with searching for key cases and legislation before looking at the wider range of resources available within the systems.

Primary Law

Both Westlaw and LexisLibrary provide online help and you can find tutorials on the key features at:-

Westlaw cases and legislation
LexisLibrary cases and legislation watch the videos linked to here for an overview of the key features
You might also need to look at older law reports (The English Reports) in Heinonline

You can also look at using the Discovery Service on the Library website to find additional/alternative textbooks.

You might also want to visit

Portsmouth University Law Society's Website, their FaceBook page or follow them on Twitter @uoplawsociety to keep up with local events.
Additional Help with Law Databases and Certification

Want to widen your reading? Look at Finding articles and books

Doing independent research? Look at our recommended Sources

If you are now feeling confident using one particular database why not take one of the certificates for either LexisLibrary or Westlaw

For current awareness of legal issues we would recommend reading the law sections of the UK broadsheet newspapers all of which you can access free of charge within LexisLibrary under the News tab. It is also well worth checking out the Insights section of Westlaw.