University of Virginia Library

LIBRARY—LEGAL BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The Law Library is accommodated by its own library rooms, separate
from the general University library. The rooms are heated by steam
and lighted by electricity, and are located with special reference to the
convenience of the law students. A librarian is in attendance during
working hours.

The library contains complete sets of the decisions of Alabama, Arizona,
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, United States Supreme Court,
Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. It contains the
National Reporter System, complete; the American Decisions; American
Reports; American State Reports; Law Reports Annotated; a valuable
collection of English Reports; and all the modern search-books, in the
form of general digests (including the Century) and Encyclopedias, besides
a large collection of text-books.

While the student is not encouraged too early to venture for himself
into either cases or text-books, save for the purpose of verifying or clearing
up some proposition of the lecture, or for the preparation of opinions or

briefs, he is incited to familiarize himself not only with the leading cases
to which his attention is called, but especially with the bibliography of
the law and the use of the books. To the latter subject, in addition to
the instruction incidentally given, several lectures are specially devoted.
The student is taught that books are the working tools of the lawyer,
and that facility in handling them, in the office and in the court room,
is an indispensable professional acquirement. He is instructed how to
consult authorities and run down cases; to distinguish doctrine from
dicta; to analyze, criticise, and compare cases; to distinguish imperative
authority from that which is persuasive only; to prepare briefs; and,
generally, so to accustom himself to law books and their use as to enable
him to investigate, with intelligence and skill, any question that may
come within the scope of his duty at the bar.