LibGuides: Foreign Legal Research: Getting Started with Foreign Legal Research

Getting Started with Foreign Legal Research

Want to learn more about foreign legal research? Get an overview of the steps for researching the law of a foreign jurisdiction.

International and Foreign Legal Research in a Nutshell by Marci Hoffman
Publication Date: 2025

Secondary Sources

While approaching FCIL research will lead you to some new resources, you will be able to recycle many of your US legal research skills. Just like with US legal research, get off and running using FCIL secondary sources which

provide background on and context to your legal research topic
include footnotes with citations to primary law and additional sources (mine those footnotes!)

Secondary Sources: Law Review and Journal Articles

Search for articles in US legal journals and law reviews on foreign law topics.

Westlaw
Westlaw is a comprehensive legal research system that includes case law, annotated statutory codes, regulatory materials, and secondary sources. (Personal Password Required)

Personal passwords are restricted by our contract to currently enrolled law students and law faculty only.
Lexis
Lexis is a comprehensive legal research system that includes case law, annotated statutory codes, regulatory materials, and secondary sources. (Personal Password Required)

Personal passwords are restricted by our contract to currently enrolled law students and law faculty only.

Locate articles in journals and law reviews published outside the US.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (HeinOnline) indexes articles and book reviews published worldwide, including journals, essays, festschrifts, and congress reports. Covers comparative law, international law (public and private), and municipal law of countries other than the United States and the United Kingdom. 1985 - present. (BC Access)

BC Access: Resource is available via computers connected to the BC network. Off-campus access requires a BC username and password, and is available to the BC Community only (current students, faculty and staff.)
vLexJustis
Collections of common law and civil law content in a single intuitive search platform. Includes over 120 million legal information documents from over 130 jurisdictions, including UK and Ireland, Europe and the EU, Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Oceania, and North America. Also includes Vincent, an artificial intelligence/machine learning tool that provides research/document analysis. (BC Law Library access)

Access is limited to current members of the BC Law School community.

Secondary Sources: Books/Ebooks

Track down books or eBooks on your research topic or jurisdiction.

BC Library Catalog
You can search the BC Law School Library catalog to locate specific articles or conduct searches to identify articles that BC has access to in print or online subscriptions.