While foot traffic has picked up in the courthouse, we know many of you are just not coming downtown like you used to. With that in mind, the law library has made a concerted effort to expand remote access to our collection materials whenever possible.
In our early transition to remotely accessible resources, VitalLaw, from Wolters Kluwer, played an important, but supporting, role in our offerings. We subscribed to 15 titles covering seven practice areas.
If you used any of the few but excellent resources on KCLL’s VitalLaw digital subscription in the past, you may have had a feeling of ennui, that somehow you were missing out on all that VitalLaw had to offer.
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Expanded Coverage to ALL Practice Areas
With our most recent renewal, we’ve expanded our coverage to include the entire VitalLaw database. Wonder no more at what lies behind the curtain. You now have backstage access to the wonderful world of VitalLaw. That includes a major increase to 525 titles covering 22 practice areas. No longer a supporting player, our VitalLaw subscription is ready to take its star turn.
Free Remote Access for All
If your practice involves any of these subject areas, you will definitely want to start your next research project by going to KCLL’s Databases and Digital Library — kcll.org/databases — for access. If you are already a subscriber, you can log on with your library card number. If you are not a subscriber, anyone who would like to access VitalLaw can do so for free by registering for a KCLL library card. A KCLL library card will give remote access to both the VitalLaw and NoloPress databases.
Navigability and Ease of Use
VitalLaw is one of the best-organized legal research databases you’ll run across. It is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. One of the big issues that I have with the brave new world of AI-generated legal research results is that you type your query and an answer spits out. You may not know what sources the AI relied on, or whether there were other resources that may have provided a better answer.
With VitalLaw, there are multiple access points for database content, but the easiest way to discover the myriad resources of a particular legal subject is to use the Practice Area menu on the main screen. Once you are in a Practice Area page, you’ll see all the resources that are on offer. The Practice Area pages offer one-stop shopping. Often, you’ll find a checklist, chart, or answer book that you might not have discovered otherwise. Each Practice Area page has content that is relevant to the field. In areas that are heavy on regulations and administrative law, you’ll find agency publications and guidance documents in addition to treatises and analysis.
Treatises and Analysis
While the content available for each Practice Area page is a bit different, every Practice Area is going to have several treatises on offer. Here’s a small sampling of treatises under Labor and Employment:
- Americans with Disabilities Act Handbook,
- Civil Rights in the Workplace,
- Covenants Not to Compete,
- Employee Dismissal Law and Practice,
- Immigration Law in the Workplace,
- Inside Arbitration: How an Arbitrator Decides Labor and Employment Cases,
- Public Employee Discharge and Discipline,
- Representing Plaintiffs in Title VII Actions,
- Sexual Harassment Law in the Workplace.
Once you click into a treatise, a table of contents on the side of the screen can help you navigate through the chapters and sections as you research. You are also able to easily keyword search within the publication you are reading without having to leave the page.
Forms, Chart, and Checklists
In addition to the more traditional research resources such as treatises, VitalLaw has some very interesting practitioner tools. Again, looking in the Labor and Employment Practice Area page, the Employment Law Forms and Checklist Library has a wide array of pleading forms, sample policies, clauses, and phrases for drafting agreements, and even sample employee posters and notices.
There are also checklists for various labor and employment topics. A very small sampling to give an idea of the types of checklists available:
- Checklist: Designing a Severance Pay Policy,
- Checklist: How to Handle Off-
Duty Misconduct,
- Checklist: Do’s and Don’ts of Confronting a Troubled Employee.
There are many, many more forms and checklists on all manner of employment and labor topics including deposition and litigation forms and checklists. You can also create Smart Charts for side-by-side comparisons of statutes, regulations, and legal issues.
Current Awareness and Newsletters
A common question we get here at the law library is whether we have access to Law360, Lexis’s subscription-
based legal news service. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer Law360 but VitalLaw has fantastic news resources to help you stay informed of the latest happenings in your practice area. From a Practice Area page, you can skim the News Headlines content posted daily or you can sign up to have practice area Dailies and Newsletters delivered directly to your email inbox. There’s also a Hot Topics section that gives a more in-depth look at emerging trends in a practice area.
Primary Law: Statutes, Regulations
In addition to treatises, analysis, practice tools, and news, the Practice Area pages will also include the relevant statues and regulations. The statutes and regulations are often conveniently grouped with other resources from a subset of a practice area.
Peek Behind the Curtain
Probably like a lot of you, I was always curious as to what other content was available beyond the 15 titles we originally subscribed to on VitalLaw. Now that I’ve had a chance to peek behind the curtain, I’m very impressed. Like Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” VitalLaw at KCLL is ready for its close-up. I hope you take advantage of your VIP access. If you have any issues registering for guest library card or other questions about using VitalLaw, contact us at services@kcll.org.
