HeinOnline (William S. Hein & Co.)

HeinOnline is the world's largest image-based legal research database, providing over 251 million pages of material, including law journals, case law, statutes, and historical government documents. The platform utilizes fully searchable, image-based PDFs that reproduce documents exactly as they were originally printed.

Operated by William S. Hein & Co., Inc., a family-run legal publisher based in the Buffalo, New York area, the company has roots dating back to the 1920s and was founded in its current form in 1961. The company serves a global client base including law firms, courts, universities, governments, and library consortia.

Positioned between general research databases and specialized legal publishers, HeinOnline is a standard fixture in academic and government law library collections. Innovation in this space is relevant to their mission of providing comprehensive, high-fidelity access to legal periodicals and government documents.