Library enquiry service
Enquiries taking less than 30 minutes are free for members. You’ll need to pay for enquiries that need more than 30 minutes of research and for premium research.
As well as searching our comprehensive collection of printed legal materials for you, we can also search our subscription databases:
- Westlaw
- Lexis+
- vLex Justis
- PIO
We can usually send you the useful extracts we find using our document delivery service for a fee.
Precedents
We can search our legal encyclopedias and a range of textbooks for the most appropriate precedents to answer your query.
We can find, for example, court forms, specific will clauses, and lease agreements.
Commentary
We can check our extensive collection of practitioner textbooks to find relevant commentary.
If you need to research the law at a particular point in time, we have old editions of practitioner textbooks dating back to the early 19th century.
Legislation
We can find legislation as original, as amended, or update it to a particular point in time. We can research how legislation has been used and find related resources.
Parliamentary
We have House of Commons papers and Hansard debates from the past 200 years, pre-Hansard material from 1066 onwards, as well as a daily updated database of official documents. We can find all kinds of parliamentary materials and official documents, including command papers and different versions of bills.
Cases
We can find cases on a topic and check for subsequent and related cases.
Journal articles
We can search our large collection of legal journals, abstracts and indexes to help you find what has been written about a topic or to locate specific articles.
Historical enquiries
We can help with historical enquiries and we keep superseded editions and original legislation. Using our historical collections and directories, we can also help trace past solicitors and law firms which no longer exist.
For example, if you need to know what a section of an act was on a certain date, or what the 14th edition of Chitty on Contracts said on a specific subject, we can trace this for you.
Corporate archive enquiries
We can search Law Society Council, Board and Committee documentation to find information about our policy decisions or responses.
Contact us to request information from our corporate archive. Requests are dealt with under our Freedom of Information Code of Practice.
Prices
Standard research that takes us less than 30 minutes is free to members. We have two levels of service:
- Standard: normally completed within 48 hours
- Premium: completed the same day, if we receive your enquiry before 2pm
| Service | Charge per 30 minutes of research |
|---|---|
| Standard | First 30 minutes free, then £30 + VAT |
| Premium | £30 + VAT |
Terms and conditions
Read our terms and conditions (PDF 542 KB)
Contact us
Email: library@lawsociety.org.uk
Call: 020 7320 5946