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Washington State Historical Collections at Gallagher Law Library

Print and digital collections about the history of Washington State legal topics

Tips for Using and Accessing Washington Legal History Information

  • Remember to use general library resources. For example:
    • Old volumes of the Washington State Bar News could contain valuable information about lawyers, the bar, and legal developments. Articles about Washington legal history might be published anytime. For instance, an article on the history of official court reporting in Washington appeared in the Nov. 2005 issue of the  Washington State Bar News (Tim Fuller, "The Most Accurate and Useful Law Books Possible": Wash.Terr., Wash., Wn.2d, and Wn.App--Milestones of Office Case Reporting in Washington, Washington State Bar News, Nov. 2005, at 22.
    • Old volumes of Martindale-Hubbell will give you biographical information about lawyers and the make-up of their law firms.
    • Treatises and practice manuals from a given period will tell you about the state of the law at that time. (Note: in the Law Library catalog, you can conduct a keyword or subject search and then limit your results to books published within a certain span of years.
  • The Law Library has many publications from the Law School-professors' course materials, student papers, annual reports, accreditation self-study reports, course catalogs, alumni publications, etc. (Some materials-such as faculty meeting minutes-are in University Archives.) Search the Law Library catalog under "University of Washington. School of Law" as an author or browse the Classified Stacks under KF282.W33. Mary A. Hotchkiss, ed., University of Washington School of Law: Celebrating 100 Years (a special issue of Profile) (KF292.W33 A54 v.11 at Reference Area and Special Collections / Washington) contains essays about the history of the Law School.
  • If you want to locate cases where a particular attorney was counsel of record, use the following searches:
    • LexisNexis - counsel(john w/2 smith)
    • Westlaw - at(john /2 smith)
  • Other University of Washington libraries, especially Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives, in the Allen Library, will have valuable information for local history (including legal history!).