Westlaw is produced by Thomson Reuters and is one of major UK Legal databases. It is a subscription database and available to OU members via Oxlip+.  Contents include:

Law Reports and Cases

• The Law Reports series  - 1865 onwards
• Weekly Law Reports
• A large number of subject specialist reports
• The English Reports (reprint of the nominate reports)
• Unreported transcripts
• Case Analysis documents including case summaries and citator information

Legislation

• Fully consolidated full text of acts since 1267 (currently in force)
• Statutory Instruments since 1948 (currently in force)
• Selected historical versions of acts

Journals

• The Legal Journals Index which has abstracts of every UK published legal article from 1986
• A large number of full text journals including the Criminal Law Review, Public Law, Cambridge Law Journal and Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

 Books

• The Common Law Series including Chitty on Contract and Clerk and Lindsell on Tort 
• Dicey and Morris on Conflict of Laws
  
• White Book (Civil Procedure)
• Archbold on Criminal Procedure

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials.

HeinOnline is a legal database which from a UK Law perspective is useful for its law journal collection.  Under the terms of its licence the material it can include is restricted which means that the more recent articles may not be available (and it differs from title to title).  If you are looking for an article it would be best to search Oxford Ejournals first and see if the article is included within HeinOnline first.  It also has a large collection of US material and UN material.

Selected Journals

• Cambridge Law Journal (1921-2005)
• Denning Law Journal (1986-2009)
• International Business Law Journal (1985-2007)
• Judicial Review (1996-2007)
• Legal Ethics (1998-2007)

There is also a collection of some of the student law reviews.

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials

i-law is a specialist legal database.  OU members have access to the Maritime material which includes:

• The Lloyds Law Reports
• Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly.

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials

The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) provides access to the most comprehensive set of British and Irish primary legal materials that are available for free and in one place on the internet. BAILII is hosted in the UK and Ireland by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London and the Law Faculty, University College Cork.  (Taken from website).

Contents

• Transcripts from the House of Lords and now Supreme Court from 1838
• Selected transcripts of Court of Appeal Civil Decisions from 1883
• Selected transcripts of Court of Appeal Criminal Decisions from 1964
• Selected transcripts of High Court decisions (date range varies by division see website for more details)
• To date a minimal number of Family decisions in the Magistrates and County courts.
• Selected transcripts from a large number of tribunals (see website for further details)
• Legislation (some as originally enacted and some amended) 1800-
• Public General Acts of the United Kingdom Parliament (1801 to 1900)
• Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain (1707 - 1800)
• Acts of the English Parliament (1267 - 1706)
• Acts of the pre-UK Parliaments (1424 - 1707)

None of the databases are fully comprehensive and as the majority are commercially produced they only contain content that they have permission to reproduce and this is typically material that they have published themselves or they have been able to 'buy' from other publishers.   On this page is a selection of some of the major UK databases.  There are online tutorials for these on the Legal Research Skills Libguide.  A list of all legal databases in the Bodleian are contained on our website at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/law/popular-links/databases.

Lexis Library is produced by Lexis Nexis (formally Butterworths) and is one of the major UK legal databases.  It is a subscription database which is available to OU members via Oxlip+.  Contents include:

Law Reports and Cases

• The Law Reports series - from 1865
• The All England Reports (main series as well as specialist series)
• A number of specialist law reports series
• The English Reports
• CaseSearch (case citator)
• Unreported transcripts

Legislation

• Fully consolidated texts of act (currently in force) 
• A historical version service
• Statutory Instruments currently in force
  

Journals

• An index of legal journals abstracts
• A number of full text journals including the New Law Journal (selected articles only), Law Society Gazette, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and Family Law

Commentary

• Halsbury's Laws of England
• A large number of Lexis Nexis Butterworth publications such as ..

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials

      AND  

Both databases are produced by Justis and are available to OU members via Oxlip+.  The Justis database has documents in full text whilst JustCite is a search and citator tool which provides links through to full text available in other databases.

Justis Content

• Case law going back to 1163 including State Reports, English Reports and a number of other specialist series
• Acts (unamended but with links to amendments) going back to 1235
• Statutory Instruments (unamended) going back to 1801 (not comprehensive)
• Justis Parliament database

JustCite Content

• The database indexes cases going back to 1163, Acts going back to 1235 and articles and other support material going back to 1986
• The database is not a full text but provides abstracts and summaries as well as citator information.  There is a link to any full text version of the document available to OU members on any of the subscription databases.  It will also provide a link to free material as well

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials

Lawtel is available to OU members via Oxlip+.

Contents

• Summaries of reported and selected unreported cases from 1980 with links to full text for some.
• PI Quantum reports
• Abstracts of legal articles from major journals and newspapers
• Summaries of UK statutes from 1984 with links to full text from 1987.  These do not contain amendments but there are notes on current status and links to amending legislation.
• Statutory Instruments from 1997.

Guides and tutorials

See the Legal Skills Libguide for a list of guides and tutorials

This is a free database produced by the UK Government.  It replaced the Statute Law Database and the legislation section of OPSI.

Contents (taken from the website)

• All legislation from 1988 – present day is available on this site as amended.
• There are no secondary legislation items (e.g Statutory Instruments) available before 1988 as they are not available in a web-publishable format.
• Most pre-1988 primary legislation is available on this site. In some cases they only have the original published (as enacted) version and no revised version.