Abstract
This session highlights the lack of access to justice and informs law librarians how to discuss race related topics using Black Lives Matter issues in legal research programs or courses. Black Lives Matter issues can be used to show how legal research operates in the real world, such as when the most up to date version of a statute is not provided to the grand jury, when police statistics are not collected or kept current, or when public records research is used with tragic consequences. It is important for law librarians to understand how tracing historical race riots and police killings can provide context for the issues of the day and emphasize the importance of researching older statutory and administrative materials, as well as archival research for law students, faculty, and members of the public. Librarians will be able to conduct better legal research training in classrooms utilizing Black Lives Matter issues such as race which will also provide an opportunity to highlight secondary source research such as treatises, journal articles, as well as current awareness sources. There is a need for law librarians to show how Black Lives Matter research encompasses both the type of sociological data used in Brown v. Board of Education and the broader data collection efforts of the present day.