Legal Research Guides

• CAIJ 
• CanLII
• HeinOnline
• La Référence (via Westlaw Next - "My subsciptions")
• Lexis+ 
• SOQUIJ 
• WestlawNext Canada 
• Westlaw Edge 

Welcome to the Law Research Guide Orientation page. Here you'll find everything you need to begin your law degree. Please review this Orientation section thoroughly to ensure you have all the necessary access and to discover helpful tips and tricks for navigating complex resources.

Database Access
Several legal databases are exclusively accessible to law students and faculty. You need to complete this consent form to authorize the library to share your email with these databases, enabling them to set up an individual account for you. 

CAIJ 
Westlaw Edge (including access to Practical Law Canada)

You can self-register for individual accounts with these databases:

SOQUIJ (register with your McGill student ID number; you will not receive a confirmation email. Allow 24 hours for processing and attempt signing in) 
Lexis+ (you will need to re-register each fall)
 

Multiple Database Access Points

McGill offers university-wide access to alternate platforms of both Westlaw and Lexis. The content is the same; law students are given access to the updated interfaces for career training purposes and some specialized practitioner tools.
Campus-wide access:

Westlaw Next Canada
Lexis Advance Quicklaw

Law Library Building Access 
Regular hours: Open to everyone 
Exam-time hours: The first two floors are accessible to everyone, while the upper three floors are reserved exclusively for law students. 
Library Hours and Contact

VPN Download

Cisco Secure Client 
(Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android)

There are group study rooms available on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor of the library. These rooms are only bookable by law students through this link:
Group Study Rooms

Graduate Students in Law (DCL/LLM) who do not have assigned space elsewhere in the university can apply for reserved study space in the Law Library. Please read instructions and access forms here:
Application for Study Space

Ebook Collections 
Many key legal texts do not show up in the catalogue. The best way to check if we have online access to a text (before recommending an ILL) is to cmd-F the publisher on our ebooks LibGuide   

Here’s a table of where to look for some of the more common publishers: 

Irwin Law Publications

1. From the CAIJ homepage, click into “Bases de données” on the left-hand menu 

2. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find the link for vLex

VLex vs VLex 

• McGill’s VLex subscription provides all McGill users with access to foreign case law (see Foreign and Comparative Law Guide: https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/law-foreign-and-comparative)  

• CAIJ’s VLex subscription provides law students access to publications by Irwin Law (via their Base de Données)   

McGill Guide to Uniform Legal Citation

AKA The McGill Guide; The Red Book; The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation 

Print copies are available at the library circulation desk.

Available online through WestLaw Edge or Westlaw Next Canada:

Historic Legislative Research

• Revised vs Annual Statutes 
  Annual Statutes of Canada: Updated versions of all Acts amended in the previous year. 
  Revised Statutes of Canada: All the statutes printed in completion, including all Acts. These were printed periodically (15-20 years) until 1985. They are no longer printed but kept up to date online via the Justice Laws Website: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/

• Legislative Backdating
  The best database for backdating Canadian legislation is HeinOnline. Here you can find the Annual Statutes of Canada going back until 1792, all versions of the Revised Statutes, and select Provincial Statutes of Canada. 

Legal Research (articles)

Our most comprehensive access point for law journals is HeinOnline's Law Journal Library. This is the largest collection of law journals in one place. Keep in mind it is not comprehensive, see discipline specific guides and E-journals and periodical indexes guide for more advanced research. 
 

Boolean Operators 
Boolean operators are words or symbols that combine search terms in databases and search engines to refine or expand results. While most legal databases offer their own advanced search guides, the following are standard across platforms. 

Advanced Booleans

Databases often have their specialized Boolean connectors for advanced searching:

Lexis+/Lexis Advance

Westlaw

HeinOnline