Dear Students
May I introduce myself as the new Student Ambassador for the Practical Law resources at Guildford. My name is Ciara Lennon and I am a full time LPC student here at Guildford. My role as a Student Ambassador for Practical Law is to help you access and utilise the resources available via Practical Law effectively. To help you do this I will:
- Send out regular update emails highlighting relevant resources you can use to assist you in your studies.
- Arrange drop-in/pre-booked sessions which will take place within the Learning Resource Centre (further details on this will be circulated shortly).
About Practical Law
Practical Law (previously known as PLC) offers a wealth of resources written by legal experts to help and support you in your studies. It is part of the Thomson Reuters group which also offers Westlaw and other legal resources. Practical Law’s strength is that it is focussed on everyday practice and so it offers information and resources which you can utilise both in your studies now, and in your future practice in the legal profession!
Essential Practical Law resources
- Books online: access a whole host of books without going to the library.
- Practice notes: view clear, detailed overviews of law before workshops and refresh yourself on the foundations of areas you don’t quite understand.
- Checklists: ensure you have everything covered for exams with quick reference guides.
- Glossaries: find definitions for terms you are unsure of in seconds.
- Legal updates: access and keep up-to-date with what is going on in the law by seeing legal updates on each subject area’s page.
- Standard documents: access templates of the forms you need to fill-out as a solicitor.
- Practical Law Magazine: brush up on your commercial awareness before a training contract or vacation scheme interview by reading recent articles on relevant areas of practice for the firm your interview is with.
- General search mechanism: a good starting point for research into topics of interest outside of the core law modules to help you decide on areas of law you may wish to expand into during your LPC year and in practice (it is also good to have an idea of this before you go for training contract interviews).
Logging on to Practical Law
Practical Law is available on Elite under Library Services Portal > Databases > Practical Law Company (to login, enter your Elite username and password into the boxes that appear). Links to various resources can be selected from the drop down ‘Resources’ tab on the top right hand corner.
To familiarise yourself with the resources available, you can access easy guides on how to use Practical Law such as the “How to Search Guide” accessible via: http://uk.practicallaw.com.lawdbs.lawcol.com/help/user-guides/how-to-search
and the Practical Law Training Webinar on Elite accessible via: http://library.law.ac.uk/plc_webinar.html#.
If you have any queries feel free to contact me at ciara.lennon71@law.ac.uk.
Kind regards
Ciara Lennon
Practical Law Student Ambassador
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