Oxford Companion to Law

A couple of weeks back Simon Chester referred to the value of the Oxford Companion to Law, which I endorsed in a comment, but it occurs to me that it is worth highlighting on the ‘main’ page. A copy of this wonderful book sits very close to me at all times. I answered my first reference question from it, way back sometime in the early 1980s – one that’s always stuck in my memory. Someone wanted to know when Jack the Ripper
did his horrible deeds. Sure enough the Oxford Companion has an entry that gives the details. Now of course, Google would probably be the best resource for that question, but it has so very much on sme many issues, important and arcane, and the summaries are so useful that I would recommend that every law librarian and legal researcher have a copy. It has long been out of print, as Simon mentioned, but I see there are some copies for sale on ABE. I got mine as a going away present at the High Court of Australia many years ago – and if you’re looking for a present for a librarian or lawyer, well you can’t go wrong with this one.