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Law Library

The world-class Law School Library contains more than 1 million volumes and ranks eighth in size among law school libraries in the United States. The library has been ranked the fourth-best law library in the United States by the National Jurist.

The library houses one of the world's most outstanding collections for foreign, comparative and international law, and international human rights. It also maintains a magnificent collection of rare books and other valuable legal materials, and is a national leader in the integration of electronic resources into a traditional legal research environment.

Uncommon among American law schools, University of Minnesota law students have privileged access to the Law Library 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—allowing research to be done even when the library staff is off duty. Seating for nearly 800 is provided at tables, carrels, group-study rooms, and lounges.

Our law students have free individual online access to the LexisNexis, Loislaw, and Westlaw computerized research systems from the library's computers, the Law School's wireless network, or home.

Students also can interact with the library online 24/7, submitting reference and interlibrary loan requests or searching the online catalogs of the Law Library's holdings as well as the greater University of Minnesota library system's 6 million volumes.

The Rare Books Collection, one of the most stellar in the country, contains several thousand volumes of early English and American statutes, reports, and treatises. The collection is housed in the Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center, a state-of-the-art facility in Mondale Hall.

The Human Rights Library contains more than 85,000 documents in such diverse subject areas as education, refugees and asylum, and military medicine in war.

The Law, Literature, and the Arts Collection contains an extensive array of legal fiction, including both classic and popular works of fiction, as well as plays, legal humor, and works that comment on the relationship of law to literature and art.