LibGuides: Law: Databases

General legal databases

Westlaw This link opens in a new window
An extensive source of information on American and UK law, including UK case law, UK legislation, Legal Journals Index and full text journals.
Please select De Montfort University from the Westlaw sign in screen. You will then be asked to enter your DMU Single Sign On credentials. You will also be asked to enter additional personal information when you log into Westlaw for the first time, including an email account. This is a one-time action.

Westlaw UK user guides All the user guides for Westlaw UK are available here
Academic certification elearning page Westlaw's Basic, Advanced and International online certification courses to complete in your own time

Lexis+ UK This link opens in a new window
An online legal research service including case law, legislation and commentary materials. Also provides access to a wide range of full-text local and national newspapers.

Please note: LexisNexis terms and conditions do not permit the uploading of Lexis content into third party applications, including artificial intelligence technologies such as large language models and generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT, Bing, Google Bard and Harvey).

Lexis+® UK Video Hub Includes a series of videos on how to search Lexis+ effectively.

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Includes major full text collections including the full text searchable archive of over 1,500 law journals. US titles dominate but an increasing number from the UK and other jurisdictions are included.

HeinOnline Law Journal Library Guide Quick Reference Guide for HeinOnline Law Journal Library

Oxford Law Trove This link opens in a new window
The Oxford Law Trove Law Trove contains the content of about 200 law textbooks across core and optional modules.

Law Trove - User Guides From OUP,. a selection of PDF guides, tutorial videos and dates for training webinars on how to use Law Trove

Specialist and practitioner databases

Practical Law This link opens in a new window
Legal topics covered include banking, employment, environmental, intellectual property, tax law and more. Contains notes, documents, checklists, toolkits and archive of articles from the PLC magazine. Now includes the Law School Resource Centre.

How to search across Practical Law and refine your results One of the training videos on Practical Law explaining how to search it effectively.

Lexis+ UK This link opens in a new window
Practical Guidance that you can access from Lexis+ UK offers practice notes, precedents, forms and current awareness alerts across 36 practice areas.

Practical Guidance introduction Highlights the key feaytures of Practical Guidance on Lexis+ UK

British Standards Online (BSOL) This link opens in a new window
Please note: students and staff are currently unable to download standards through the FileOpen plug-in when accessing from a DMU PC or DMU-issued device. The library is working with ITMS to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Students/staff using their own (personal) device are unaffected and will be able to install the free FileOpen software.

Definitive site for all publications from British Standards Institution, with bibliographic information for more than 39,500 documents.

To download and print PDF documents from the British Standards site from 1st Sep 2021, you will be required to have the FileOpen plug-in installed on your device. You can still view documents online without the plug-in.
You can download the FileOpen plug-in from the FileOpen website.
Some web browsers will open PDFs in-browser as default behaviour. This will cause an error when opening British Standards PDFs. To avoid this error, please save the document to your device first, and then open the file.
For further information and support, please read the following library news blog post.
The FileOpen Frequently Asked Questions page on the British Standards website can help with some problems encountered when using this software. Some users have reported issues dealing with Digital Rights Management (https://bsol.bsigroup.com/ContentProvider/FAQs?menuSelected=Digital%20Rights%20Management) error messages.

Law in Sport (LawInSport) This link opens in a new window
LawInSport provides commentary and analysis on the latest issues and legal developments in the world of sport. It provides peer-reviewed legal articles, podcasts and videos as well as organise and host networking events, seminars, webinars and conferences.
Register for standard membership with your DMU email address. Your subscription will then automatically upgraded (note that this can take up to 24 hours)

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Business and Legal Aspects of Sports and Entertainment (BLASE) is available from HeinOnline and is designed to assist researchers in locating sources relevant to the many legal and business issues surrounding the sports and entertainment sectors. To access it, log into HeinOnline and select Business and Legal Aspects of Sports and Entertainment (BLASE) under 'Browse Databases by Name'.

What are databases?

Library databases are online resources you can search to find reliable information from trusted sources. Databases can be general or subject specific and can include a wide range of content including full text journal articles, ebooks, reports, abstracts, conference proceedings etc. Legal databases also include case reports, legislation and resources/guidance for practitioners.

Library Search is a database of databases and allow to search the content of most databases in one go. However, it misses out the content of legal databases (including cases and legislation) so you will need to search both Library Search and the legal databases for a comprehensive search.

The databases listed on the left are legal databases. Check this link for a list of all individual databases bought by the library.