Library

Please see our Library Guide for up-to-date information on services we provide to the Law School community and beyond.

The Law Library’s physical space on the 6th floor is available to Law School community members – students, faculty and staff – whenever the Law School is open, subject to current building policies.

CUNY-affiliated individuals who are not members of the Law School can access the Law Library when in-person library services are offered. See “Library Hours” in the Library Guide for more information.

For reference questions, or any questions about library access not answered in theLibrary Guide, please email: legal.research@law.cuny.edu.

For any other questions about library policy, please email: raquel.gabriel@law.cuny.edu

The Law Library is fully integrated with the Law School’s philosophy and approach to legal education. The Law Library’s collection has been carefully planned and designed to support the Law School’s public interest law orientation and innovative curriculum. With special emphasis on practice and public interest law materials, the Law Library is well-equipped to support the clinical and theoretical focuses of the Law School’s curriculum.

The Library facility includes approximately 22,500 square feet and provides seating for 200 students. In keeping with modern law library practice, there is a heavy emphasis on providing materials in electronic format that can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, using computers or other electronic devices. The Law School’s subscriptions to Bloomberg Law, HeinOnline, Lexis, Westlaw, and other research services provide a wealth of primary law materials, legal treatises, law journals, and non-legal resources in electronic format. The Law Library’s print collection includes 13,000 hard-copy volumes and 148,000 microform volume equivalents. In addition to the electronic and print materials available through the CUNY School of Law Library, a large electronic resource network available to all CUNY undergraduate and graduate schools provides access to over 450,000 e-book titles and 100,000 electronic serial titles that are linked in the Library’s online catalog.

Legal Research courses are developed and taught by members of the Law Library’s professional staff who hold the ranks of Associate and Full Professor. The required first-year Legal Research course provides unusually thorough training in legal research, culminating in a final research assignment that requires students to apply and reinforce their new skills through experiential learning. This learning process continues in cooperation with the required first-year Lawyering Seminar course, where students must do their own legal research as part of a semester-long case simulation. Advanced Legal Research course electives for 2L and 3L students provide additional, more specialized research training opportunities.

CUNY Law Library Electronic Resources Page. The CUNY Law Library Electronic Resources page provides a complete list of all our legal and non-legal research databases plus popular subscription resources. Selected free resources are also included. Searchable by subject or keyword.

Students, try the Wolters Kluwer Online Study Aid Library! A permanent link is now on the Student Resources page of our website in the Study Aids section.