Resources for Research Assistants

Each faculty member at Boston College Law School has a Law Library Liaison. The Liaison is a Teaching & Research librarian who works with assigned faculty members to assist with research. When you receive a research assignment, ask your faculty member who their Liaison is and feel free to contact them directly for research guidance and support. If that individual is not available, the Teaching & Research Librarian covering reference will be happy to help you. You can contact them via email, chat or telephone. All contact information is available on the Get Research Help link found on the Law Library website.  

If your work will involve borrowing books from the BC Law Library or other University Libraries we do not recommend that you check the books out to yourself as you are ultimately responsible for all books charged to your account.  Instead, ensure that your faculty member has set you up as a proxy borrower. This will allow you to check out book on their behalf. All they need to do is complete the Request for Proxy Borrowing Form. Then when checking out materials just ask the library staff member at the Information Desk to check them out to the faculty member.

Free work-related printing is available for research assistants. Your faculty member can submit requests for research assistant printer access to ATR via atrinbox@bc.edu.  They should include in the request your name, username, and the start and end dates for your service. 

ATR will add you to the printer authorization file and email you instructions how to access the RA printer. Instructions for configuring the RA printer on personal laptops can be found online at the BC ITS website here.

As an alternative to printing, there are a number of options available for storing and organizing electronic documents, including shared folders on Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg or citation management tools like PowerNotes or Zotero. For more information on citation management tools, please see our Research Guide on Using Legal Citation Checking and Citation Management Software.

The Faculty Support team is available to assist with clerical and administrative needs related to your work as a research assistant. They can assist with tasks such as copying, printing, scanning, reserving rooms, and submitting reimbursements. They also serve point-of-contact for course related matters like organizing Canvas sites and creating seating charts.

If you need their assistance, you can contact them at lawfacultysupport@bc.edu.