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Introducing the Law Library of Congress Legal Research Institute

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In celebration of the 220th birthday of the Library of Congress, the Law Library of Congress is proud to announce a new offering on Law.gov designed to more quickly and easily connect patrons to our educational presentations and resources—the Law Library of Congress Legal Research Institute. On the Legal Research Institute homepage, users will see resources divided into four options: U.S. Law Webinars; Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Webinars; Onsite Classes; and Online Resources.

Law Library of Congress Legal Research Institute Homepage
Law Library of Congress Legal Research Institute Homepage

The U.S. Law Webinars section provides information about all of the webinars touching on U.S. domestic law, including the Congress.gov Webinar and the Orientation to Legal Research Webinar Series. The Orientation to Legal Research Webinar Series provides a basic introduction to U.S. federal legal sources and research techniques, currently focusing on U.S. case law research, U.S. statutory and legislative research, and U.S. regulations. The Legal Research Institute page provides registration information for these one-hour online orientations, taught by legal reference librarians at the Law Library of Congress, which are offered once a month on a rotating basis. In addition, patrons can use the Legal Research Institute page to register for the bi-monthly Congress.gov Webinar, which offers an overview of Congress.gov, the official website for U.S. federal legislative information.

The focus of the Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Webinars section as of now is the Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series of classes, which is designed to highlight some of the foreign, comparative, and international law issues researched by the foreign law experts at the Law Library of Congress, including legislative frameworks for fighting pandemics, the recent Israeli elections, and perspectives on Brexit.

Another key feature of the Legal Research Institute is the Archived Webinars page. Law Library of Congress staff are working to convert recordings of prior webinars to video format, with closed captions, so that they can ultimately be viewed on this page. The first archived webinar included is the “How (and Why) to Transcribe Herencia” presentation related to the virtual Herencia Transcribe-a-thon.  Keep an eye on this page for future webinar uploads.

Even though Library events are currently postponed or cancelled until July 1, 2020, as soon as in-person classes are available, patrons can learn more about these presentations and register for them using the Onsite Classes page. If you are unable to attend one of our in-person or webinar trainings, we also offer links to helpful legal research information, including Law Library of Congress research guides, digitized legal collections, and legal research reports, via our Online Resources page.

As always, each Legal Research Institute page will include a link at the top of the screen to our Ask a Librarian service, where you are welcome to contact us if you have any research questions, even if Library of Congress buildings are closed. Please don’t hesitate to connect with us!

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