Looking for a more powerful legal research tool? LLMC recently relaunched its database, with a new design and better tools to help your legal research. So, whether you have years of experience or have never used LLMC, this is a good time to become familiar with the new system and what information you can find there. information you can find there.
LLMC is a database of legal and historical materials, originally founded as a nonprofit in 1976 to preserve microfiche. Their goal is to “safeguard and expand access to historic, legal, and governmental publications by curating, digitizing, and preserving documents from around the world”. In 2003 they introduced an online digital database, which the new system is replacing.
LLMC offers access to 178,730 legal and historical documents from 190 countries around the world, going back through a thousand years of legal history. On the new LLMC homepage you can click and zoom on the map to easily see what resources the database has for different places around the globe.
But it also has material useful to recent and local matters. LLMC has thousands of items from Pennsylvania specifically, including county legal reporters from most PA counties. The new database system also has court filings from all the Pennsylvania state appellate courts.
All the items in LLMC have their full text available to read online, to download in PDF format, to email or to share in other ways, using simple built-in tools. On the search results page, the new LLMC automatically generates a timeline of your results, so you can easily see the total number of hits and how those are distributed chronologically.
LLMC makes a significant portion of its material available for free to anyone online at discover.llmc.com. But a significant portion of their collection is only available to users with a login, and that is where the Allegheny County Law Library (ACLL) can help.
ACLL members can remotely access the full suite of LLMC materials by going through the link on the ACLL website. Patrons without an Allegheny County Law Library membership can also access this material, but they’ll need to visit ACLL in person to do so.
If you want to become a member to get remote access to LLMC, or any of the other databases we provide, you can find all the information to do so on our Membership page.