IMPORTANT NOTE:
Right now, it is exam period at the law school, and the law library is filled to capacity with studying law students. During this time, with very limited exceptions, the law library is only open to current HLS affiliates and an HLS ID card must be shown to gain admission. For more information, inquire at the circulation desk. The telephone number is (617) 495-3455.
I recently gave a library tour to a group of conference attendees here at the law school. Like many visitors of this nature, they asked me about opportunities to come and research at the law library. So I thought I’d do a quick blog post about it, with links to the relevant websites that provide more information.
For general information about the law library’s admission policy, visit the Admission to the Library page on our website. This page includes a link to the form that anyone who is not a Harvard student or a member of the Harvard staff or faculty must fill out to be admitted to the library, including HLS alumni. The form requires you to indicate your affiliation information, and provides information about admission fees, if they are applicable to your situation.
If you have an academic affiliation, and are wondering whether you can access our library for research and how much, if anything, it would cost, this form will likely answer that question for you. However, if you would like more more information, you may send an email to [email protected].
The HLS Graduate Program has a Visiting Scholar / Visiting Researcher Program, for which admission is competitive and which has admitted law professors and graduate students from all over the world to conduct research related to specified scholarly projects. Participants in this program are in residence at the law school, which provides them admission to the law library, for either a semester or an academic year.
Finally, in each of the last several years, the law library’s Library Innovation Lab has sponsored a summer fellows program, during which fellows work on their own projects and on other projects in collaboration with Lab members. The website does not have information yet about the 2019 summer fellows program, but stay tuned!