Welcome to the Georgetown University Law School’s research guide for Civil Legal Assistance. There is a wealth of resources related to civil legal assistance history and research, both at Georgetown University and elsewhere. This guide is designed to help patrons access the University’s materials both via print and online access to various databases of digitized materials, and users to find generally accessible material, both nationally and internationally.
The Georgetown Law Library has a substantial collection of civil legal assistance history materials in several locations, but mainly in the Special Collections Department’s National Equal Justice Library (NEJL). NEJL is an exceedingly robust and informative collection dedicated to documenting and preserving the legal profession's history of providing counsel for those unable to afford it. NEJL material is available to be used only in the Special Collections Reading Room (Williams 210).
If you are a member of the Georgetown University community, please feel free to schedule a research consultation with the Special Collections Librarian. Patrons may also seek assistance from the Reference Desk. Outside researchers should contact Special Collections by either email or phone to schedule an appointment.
Navigate the pages at the side (or top, if you are on a mobile device) of this guide to find in-depth sources regarding the history, context, and resources available through Georgetown Law Library and beyond. Aside from those detailed sections of the guide, don’t forget to explore the following broader resources. Starting with the library’s own catalog, there are a variety of ways to find and access materials from the Georgetown Law Library page. You can also use the WorldCat database, a mega-catalog database, to locate resources that may not be available at the Law Center, and then use our Inter-Library Loan service to request the resources that you need. Among the useful research resources available here in the library are Lexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline, Index to Legal Periodicals, Index to Legal Periodicals Retro, JSTOR, Academic Search Premier, and Project Muse. While individual sources of note will often be specifically identified throughout this guide, it is of critical importance to search generally through the aforementioned resources (particularly HeinOnline) as the offerings they have cannot be indexed wholly within a research guide. When researching civil assistance legal history, consult both print and electronic resources which are very useful and relevant. Links to these resources are interspersed throughout this guide as well.
