Where to search
Where to search- Law DatabasesYour go-to for legal research, find databases available to you listed alphabetically, grouped by type, jurisdiction or subject area.
- Legal Research Subject GuidesPrepared by law librarians, these guides will point you toward the best sources for particular jurisdictions or legal topics, or introduce you to general skills required in legal research.
- Library Guides for other disciplinesA broader collection of Library Guides can help when your research takes you beyond Law. Find research guidance on Archives, Geospatial data, Medical, Engineering, Humanities, Fine Arts, Education, Business and Economics databases and more. There are also guides for scholarly processes and considerations, such as literature or systematic reviews, open access, reference management software and more.
New Scholarship
- SSRNA popular pre-press used by legal academics to share accepted manuscripts before they are available via publishers.
- MLS Research Paper SeriesA collection of papers sourced from MLS and published on SSRN
- Finding Theses GuideGuidance on finding theses from the University of Melbourne, Australia or Globally.
Unclear on where to get started? Email us at: law-librarians@unimelb.edu.au
Constructing searches
Constructing searchesSearch connectors
All databases have readily available onscreen help information to assist in constructing more complex searches using different fields or by using eg: Boolean and proximity operators, and truncation and wildcards.
Note: the operators used in each database vary, so be sure to check the onscreen help to ensure you are using the correct symbols.
Not getting good results?
Advanced Search options
Check which fields you are actually searching within, some databases exclude full text searches by default.
Alternative terminology and spelling
Terminology commonly changes across jurisdictions, variant spelling exists and language shifts over time. Incorporate alternative terminology (e.g. competition law/antitrust) generate synonyms, and use spelling variations (example: labour / labor) or use a wildcard symbol to ensure all relevant results are returned. Some databases will include variant spelling, others won't.
Found something great? Find related material
Using Subject Headings
If you find a good article, use the SUBJECT headings to find more articles.
Mine citations
Use the article's reference list or bibliography to find related material. Some databases will also provide information about subsequent citation of an article or work (e.g. Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science) Note, these are not exhaustive lists of where the work has been cited - many legal scholarship sources are not picked up in these records. Search using the article title, in double quotes, in full-text fields of legal databases to find mentions of it in footnotes or reference lists.
Check the author's or research centre's other publications
You may find these on Institutional or public profile pages (e.g. ORCiD or Google Scholar Profiles).
Journal and Database coverage
Database Date Ranges
Be alert to the date ranges of databases. Most databases commence in the early to mid-1980s. If you are looking for earlier legal periodicals, try searching the following databases.
- Index to Legal Periodicals RetrospectiveThis retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic are also be covered.
- HeinOnlineHeinOnline is Hein’s premier online research product with millions of pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. The collection features legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries in addition to its vast collection of current day law journals. Each collection can be searched separately, or cross-searched from the HeinOnline homepage. It contains the full text of all articles from the first volume of every journal in the database.
Methodological resources
Methodological resourcesAside from your substantive research question, the library can provide resources for better understanding your research process. Doctrinal research print materials can be found in the law library collection, but empirical research guidance will generally be held in other branch collections. There are also ebooks, research handbooks and sometimes video series available to explain and assist with different research methodologies. All can be found via the library catalogue.
- Empirical Research NetworkIf you're employing empirical research methods in your PhD, get in touch with the Empirical Research Network for support and updates.
Keep current with alerts
You can keep up to date with court decisions, new scholarship, news and other publications by setting up alerts.
Tip
Your University of Melbourne student email account is provided by GSuite. You can create variant email addresses to more easily manage your email alerts and mail rules. Note - this does not apply to staff email addresses.
How?
Gmail does not recognise or distinguish between addresses with full stops, or any characters after a + symbol in the name field. When signing up for alerts, you can provide variant email addresses and create a mail rule that any message sent to that address goes into its own folder - e.g. FirstnameLastname+westlaw@student.unimelb.edu.au, Firstname.Lastname@student.unimelb.edu.au, and FirstnameLastname@student.unimelb.edu.au will all successfully send to you.
- Keeping up to date in LawConsult the Keeping up to date in Law guide for detailed instructions on setting up alerts for different material types and jurisdictions.