This guide intends to help first-year law students have all the resources they will need and use the most in their first year of law school in one easily accessible place. Many of these resources will overlap with resources that second and third-year law students will use as well as those used by practicing attorneys. In addition to relevant federal material, links are provided to Illinois material for the convenience of University of Illinois College of Law law students.
Disclaimer: This resource is provided for informational purposes only; not for the purpose of providing legal advice.
These books will give you a general idea of the law school experience and help prepare you for the next three years of your life!
They are all available at the University of Illinois (the individual library is also noted), or you can find them on a website such as Barnes & Noble.
Demystifying the First Year of Law School : A Guide to the 1L Experience by 
Excelling in Law School - A Complete Approach by 
Law School Confidential : A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience : By Students, for Students, 3e by 
Law School Survival Manual : From LSAT to Bar Exam by 
Writing Essay Exams To Succeed in Law School: Not Just Survive by You will be provided with passwords to each of these resources by the end of the first week of law school.
Each of these three resources provides a searchable interface and access to cases, statutes, regulations, secondary sources and much more. Both LexisAdvance and Westlaw allow natural language and Boolean searching, while Bloomberg allows Boolean searching and has a default setting.
Remember APA? Chicago? MLA? Well now you get to add The Bluebook to the mix (and in case you're wondering there's no citation creator, nor should you rely on Westlaw/LexisNexis/Bloomberg's citations. So get ready, you're about to get really familiar with The Bluebook, the way to cite legal material. You can access The Bluebook online or you may purchase it in print (recommended) from an online bookseller.
Learn It! Know It! Love it?
We have a research guide dedicated to learning Bluebook Citation
Looking for an article or information on some other topic? Find a more authoritative source than a simple Google search by using Google Scholar.
Other great guides can be found from the Law Library and from the Main University Library