Where do you go for an easy-to-read summary of an unfamiliar legal area?

If you went to law school, you likely reached for the appropriate palm-sized paperback in the West Nutshell Series®—each title summarizing a specific area of the law without bogging you down with citations, footnotes, or minutiae.

As a law librarian, you might still reach for a nutshell. See James B. Boskey, For the Bookshelf: ADR Guide, 11 ALTERNATIVES TO HIGH COST LITIG. 106 (August 1993). After all, if you're researching a brand new area but aren't yet ready to plunge into the primary authorities (or even an exhaustive secondary source), an easy-to-read nutshell still hits the spot.

You can now (at last!) search nutshells on Westlaw. Available databases include the following:

• Bruce's Real Estate Finance in a Nutshell (REALEST-NS)
• Conison's Employee Benefit Plans in a Nutshell (EMPBENPLN-NS)
• Covington and Decker's Employment Law in a Nutshell (EMPLAW-NS)
• Eggen's Toxic Torts Law in a Nutshell (TOXICTORT-NS)
• Findley and Farber's Environmental Law in a Nutshell (ENVLAW-NS)
• Frolik and Kaplan's Elder Law in a Nutshell (ELDERLAW-NS)
• Hood, Hardy and Lewis' Workers' Compensation and Employee Protection Laws in a Nutshell (WORKCOMP-NS)
• Kionka's Torts in a Nutshell (TORTS-NS)
• Krause and Meyer's Family Law in a Nutshell (FAMLAW-NS)
• Leslie's Labor Law in a Nutshell (LABLAW-NS)
• Lynn and McCouch's Introduction to Estate Planning in a Nutshell (ESTPLAN-NS)
• McCarthy and Reynolds' Local Government Law in a Nutshell (LOCGOVLAW-NS)
• McNulty and McCouch's Federal Estate and Gift Taxation in a Nutshell (GIFTTAX-NS)
• Nolon and Salkin's Land Use in a Nutshell (LANDUSE-NS)
• Player's Federal Law of Employment Discrimination in a Nutshell (EMPDISCR-NS)
• Ramsey and Abrams' Children and the Law in a Nutshell (CHILDLAW-NS)

More than 100 titles are expected to be added to Westlaw in the coming months.

Hornbooks, too! If you need more citations and a more thorough discussion of a practice area, you can turn to a hornbook. More than two dozen titles from the West Hornbook Series® will be available on Westlaw in the near future; the following seven databases are available on Westlaw now:

• Blanck, Hill, Siegal, and Waterstone's Hornbook on Disability Civil Rights Law and Policy (DISCIVRT-HB)
• Friedenthal, Kane, and Miller's Hornbook on Civil Procedure (CIVPRO-HB)
• Furrow, Greaney, Johnson, Jost, and Schwartz' Hornbook on Health Law (HEALTHLAW-HB)
• Gorman and Finkin's Hornbook on Labor Law-Unionization and Collective Bargaining (UNIONCB-HB)
• Lewis and Norman's Hornbook on Civil Rights Law and Practice (CIVRIGHT-HB)
• Wright and Kane's Hornbook on the Law of Federal Courts (LAWFEDCTS-HB)
• Zuckman, Corn-Revere, Frieden, and Kennedy's Hornbook on Modern Communications Law (MODCOMML-HB)

The Table of Contents service and ResultsPlus are available for all Westlaw databases containing nutshells and hornbooks.