Have you checked out PLI PLUS lately? If so, you may have noticed its clean and updated user interface. But it has great content too! We recently had a library update with our PLI rep, and I’m here to share my notes again. If you’re a student, faculty member, or practitioner, read on for some highlights to help you get (re-)acquainted.
If you haven’t used PLI PLUS before, here’s some quick background:
The PLI PLUS platform provides a comprehensive library of treatises, course handbooks, and answer books from the Practising Law Institute (PLI), a nonprofit organization known for its accredited continuing legal and professional education programs delivered by volunteer faculty including lawyers, judges, corporate counsel, regulators and other professionals. Transcripts of its webcast programs and seminars are also available on PLI PLUS.
PLI’s seminars are up-to-the minute current. For example, last month it offered two seminars on immigration, Challenging Immigration Detention with Habeas Petitions on February 2 and Immigration Executive Orders: What You and Your Clients Need to Know on February 15.
Major content in PLI PLUS:
- Over 100 treatises
- Answer Books: these are Q&A style, useful for students new on clinics, and they also include case studies
- Course Handbooks: these are often available before program, and also includes case studies
- Program Transcripts from their seminars and webcasts (available for all programs except those by government speakers)
- Forms: search, download, and edit over 3000 forms from across the platform
Narrow your search results: there is a narrowing function to focus your search results within only the books you think might be most useful.
PDF format: All titles on the platform (with the exception of some archived program books) are available in PDF by chapter.
More about PLI PLUS forms:
- Forms open in RTF
- Forms include full agreements/contracts, and clauses
- You can click through to the book that is source of a form
- You can pull up a list of all forms contained in any chapter on the platform
General features
- Search across platform, book, and individual chapters
- Book overview contains update information (like e-pocket parts)
- Permalinks to sections and content areas are available
- Course Books: related contents lnk will give the history of a title with related transcripts and forms
- Full archive of material to 2000, some content goes back to 1980 or its origination date
- Practice areas on immigration and privacy & cybersecurity
- Login accounts – doesn’t work for basic answers (requires proxy) but for remote access for facstaff this can be set up
Create your own login account within the HLS access to use additional features:
- Ability to make notes and highlights in content (plus option to include these when sharing content via email)
- Create your own My Bookshelf and subshelves that you can add chapters and titles to, plus share links to your shelves with others (this could be useful for faculty assigning content, students working together on projects in clinics and other settings)
- View all your notes and marks on one page
- Note that creating your own login doesn’t work for getting remote access to PLI PLUS–you’ll still need to authenticate with a Harvard proxy link (or remember that you can always get to it by searching for PLI PLUS in the HOLLIS catalog).