LLASTL Blog

Here’s a sliver of what you can learn at two exhibits at the Law Library.

In advance of its upcoming exhibit on The Freedom Suits (co-sponsored with the Freedom Suits Memorial Foundation), the Law Library Association invites you to check out various resources to learn more about what these lawsuits represented. Below are some resources for you.

Juneteenth has evolved to be a celebration of freedom, a time of reflection on our history, and a time for education on civil rights and racial inequality.  Originally, it was a celebration of the specific date that the news of emancipation reached the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. 

Are you trying to decipher and understand a complicated or ambiguous federal law?  HeinOnline is the legal research tool for you.  Members of the Law Library Association have 24/7 remote access to HeinOnline.  HeinOnline has a database called the U.S.

The Law Library Association sat down with Law Library Association Board Member, the Honorable Nicole Colbert-Botchway, to learn more about her background and what motivated her to become a lawyer and a judge. Read her story below.

Did you grow up in St. Louis?

Yes, I grew up in North St. Louis and have been a city resident all my life.

Where did you go to college?

Where did the Law Library Association of St. Louis live before the current Civil Courts Building was completed in 1930?

From 1909-1930, the Law Library was housed in the Pierce Building at the northeast corner of Chestnut and 4th Street.  The move was precipitated by the Law Library outgrowing its space in the Old Courthouse. 

Did you know that the Law Library Association of St. Louis has an online catalog that you can search remotely?   We have a growing selection of resources for the pro se patron representing himself in a legal matter. You can view the list of pro se resources by going to our catalog and viewing the list from a drop-down menu on the catalog home page.   Many of these pro se resources can also be downloaded, and can therefore be accessed and read without even having to come to the Law Library.

We get a lot of visitors in our library who are attempting to educate themselves about a legal issue, find legal representation, find legal forms, or figure out how to represent themselves in a legal case.   The complexity of the law and the court process and rules can be overwhelming to a non-lawyer.   To help these patrons, The Law Library Association of St. Louis decided to create a “Guide to Representing Yourself in Court.”   The Library was able to fund the creation of this guide after receiving a grant from the St. Louis Bar Foundation.

The Law Library Association proudly collaborates with Saint Louis Public Library on several projects. Here's what Lisa Thorp of Saint Louis Public Library had to say in our recent Q and A with her.

More often than you might think, we receive a request from an attorney looking for an older version of a Missouri statute that they cannot find online.  The Law Library has sets of the Missouri Revised Statutes dating back to 1879.  If you ever need to compare a new statute to its older version, please visit our library and check out our collection.   We also have print volumes of the Missouri Session Laws dating back to 1836.  For the digitally savvy, these session laws can also be found online at https://mdh.co