Category: Law Library

Summer Access to Lexis Advance

Access to Lexis Advance will continue during the summer.  As long as you are registered for Lexis Advance you do not have to do anything to continue using Lexis Advance this summer.  If you have not registered for Lexis Advance, please contact our Lexis Account Manager, Jennifer Durkin at jennifer.durkin@lexisnexis.com.

Academic purpose restrictions still apply for the summer.  Academic purposes include, but are not limited to:

• Summer course preparation and assignments
• Research associated with Moot Court, Law Review, or Law Journal
• Research associated with pursuing a grant or scholarship
• Service as a paid or unpaid research assistant to a professor
• An internship, externship or clinic position for school credit or graduation requirement
• Study for the bar exam
• Research skill improvement

Academic purposes do not include research conducted for a law firm, corporation, or other entity (other than a professor or law school) that is paying you to conduct research, or that is passing along the cost of research you conduct to a third party.

If you need access to materials that are still not available on Lexis Advance, you will need to contact our Lexis Account Manager, Jennifer Durkin (jennifer.durkin@lexisnexis.com), to get summer access to classic Lexis.

Students and graduates (including December 2011 graduates) engaged in verifiable 501(c)(3) public interest work may apply for access to Cases, Codes, Law Reviews, Shepard’s, and Matthew Bender treatises on lexis.com through the ASPIRE 2012 program. (Log in and then click this link  )

Summer Access to Westlaw

To access Westlaw over the summer, students need to register on Westlaw.   Log onto Westlaw and click on the image that says summer access.  Typically, it shows up on the right under the Weekly Poll feature. Academic use only restrictions apply for summer.  Academic purposes include:

• Summer law school classes
• Law review or law journal work
• Project for a professor
• Moot court
• Unpaid, nonprofit public-interest internship/externship pro bono work required for graduation

Passwords may NOT be used for research for law firms, government agencies, corporations or other purposes unrelated to law school coursework. Students graduating this year can extend their passwords by following the special link for graduates.

Access to Casemaker continues year round.  Law students do not have to do anything to keep summer access.  Students can use Casemaker to conduct research for their employer.  Casemaker does not have an academic password restriction!

For more information about summer or graduate access, see our new library guide – Legal Research Databases. 

Plagiarism, as defined on the University of Akron Office of General Counsel web page, “is the intentional or unintentional use of the words or ideas of another without acknowledging their source.” Deliberate and accidental plagiarism are treated the same by the University and the School of Law.  The University places the responsibility on the students to know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

Law students caught plagiarizing will be violating the Law School’s Student Disciplinary Code and will be subject to proceedings under the Code.  Consequences can be severe and may include dismissal from the University.

More information about plagiarism can be found here- Law Library Plagiarism Guide.

CALI Lesson:  Plagiarism – Keeping Out of Trouble.  This lesson will explain what constitutes plagiarism, how to avoid plagiarizing, and offers opportunities for students to test their understanding of plagiarism.