The School of Advanced Study at the University of London brings together nine internationally renowned research institutes to form the UK's national centre for the support of researchers and the promotion of research in the humanities.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is engaged in a broad range of activities in the promotion and support of legal research in its widest sense. IALS serves its various constituencies of researchers, nationally and locally, both at Charles Clore House on Russell Square in Bloomsbury, featuring its national legal research library, through its digital free-to-internet resources, and through its outreach activities around the country. The Institute has an inclusive approach to legal studies embracing the theoretical basis of law, the sources and documentation of the law, and the direct impact of law on human lives.

The role of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is to conduct research; to promote and facilitate, within London and nationally and internationally, research and scholarship at an advanced level across the whole field of law; to disseminate the results of such research and scholarship; and to provide to all those undertaking research in law a library facility with up to date technology, that is international in character and standing.

IALS is a postgraduate research institute with a core of researchers, research students and legal information professionals, but which draws its primary membership from academic researchers and postgraduate research students from other institutions throughout the UK, and which also provides services to researchers in the wider legal community. IALS is a member-institute of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London.

IALS Library is a national and international resource for legal research and has over 288,000 volumes the majority of which are housed at the Institute site on Russell Square in Bloomsbury. The collections of foreign and international law are the most extensive in the UK and contain much unique material. The collections concentrate primarily on common law, civil law and Roman-Dutch law systems throughout the world and include material in western European languages for all jurisdictions for comparative and general reference purposes.

IALS Library's primary function is to serve a national academic research community but it has other significant and diverse communities to which it provides services including the world's largest taught course master's degree programme, large numbers of subscribing practising lawyers, and a small community of researchers and PhD students at the Institute itself. The Library seeks to support law librarians in other universities and organisations to provide specialist library and information services in law, particularly in foreign, comparative and international law.

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