There are a myriad of sources and services for keeping current on legal scholarship and changes in the law. This page lists some of the most popular resources including:
When Bloomberg Law purchased former legal publisher Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) it took over BNA's Law Reports. Bloomberg recently scaled back the number of law reports available, but there are still more than 40 of these topical newsletters, including U.S. Law Week, available through Bloomberg Law. To access these and to subscribe to individual titles, log into Bloomberg Law and then go to Bloomberglaw.com/subscriptions.
If you need to create a Bloomberg Law account, go to Bloomberglaw.com and click on the 'Register Academic Account' button below the sign in box. Be sure to use your LUC email address.
You can create an electronic table of contents (eTOC) alert for one or more titles in order to receive an email each time the selected titles are updated in HeinOnline. Please be aware that many law journals have an embargo period so the content is delayed in appearing on HeinOnline. There is no embargo period for ABA titles, however.
To access the eTOC service, you’ll need to create a MyHein account. To create a My Hein account, go to the LUC Law Library homepage and click on HeinOnline in the Popular Resources menu. From the HeinOnline home page click on "Law Journal Library." Then click on the MyHein tab at the top of the page. Click on the "Create an Account" in the left column.
To create an eTOC Alert, simply browse to the desired journal and select “Create a TOC Alert” from the top of the page.
Law360 is a popular legal news and current awareness resource covering more than 40 different practice areas. Faculty can sign up for daily newsletters in one or more practice areas. Newsletters arrive via email before the start of business each day.
To sign up, access Law360 from the Law Library’s A-Z database list. If you are off-campus, you will be asked for your LUC username and password to access content. Click on Loyola in the upper right-hand corner, then choose ‘newsletter sign up’. Enter your LUC e-mail address and choose the newsletters you wish to receive. Please note that because the links to Law360 articles are not run through LUC’s proxy server, you will not be able to open newsletter links off-campus.
Practical Law is a practice-focused research and current awareness service offered through Westlaw. Practical Law covers several areas of law, including corporate, securities, IP, finance, employee benefits, labor & employment, and antitrust. Faculty can access Practical Law by signing into Westlaw. You’ll see a link to Practical Law on the right-hand side. Clicking on that will bring you to the Practical Law homepage. From there, scroll down on the right-hand side and look for e-mail updates.
SmartCILP is the online-delivery version of the former print product called Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) published by the University of Washington Law Library. Maintained diligently by an experienced team of editors, the publication indexes, by subject heading, the most recent issues of primarily American law journals. Since the 1960s, the index has been sent to its subscribers on a weekly basis.
Through CILP, law professors, lawyers, and law librarians receive timely topical access to more than 650 legal publications organized within 104 relevant subject headings. Also included are complete tables of contents from all journals indexed, as well as Bluebook citations.
William S. Hein & Co., Inc. and HeinOnline recently took over the publication of this crucial resource for legal scholars. Under Hein’s direction, the function and purpose of CILP will remain exactly the same—to provide a weekly, subject-categorized index of the most recent law journal issues.
Follow this link to learn how to create, edit, and manage SmartCILP profiles via the HeinOnline interface.
A blog is a log or journal of chronological entries (called “posts”) by an individual, a group or an institution, made available at a particular site on the Internet. Legal blogs are sometimes referred to as “blawgs”. Blogs or blawgs may include a variety of types of articles such as commentary on recent decisions, analyses of legal issues in the news or lists of the author's favorite web links. Blawgs are having a transformative impact on the world of legal scholarship due to their ability to allow for the rapid, unfiltered dissemination of legal ideas. When a “hot topic” legal issue erupts, bloggers are the first to provide reactions, suggest lines of inquiry and provide perspective. Because many blawgs allow comments, they also serve as a virtual “faculty lounge” or coffeeshop, where ideas can be floated, inflated, debated and punctured, sometimes in raucous, freewheeling fashion.
Below are links to the most-frequently used legal blogs and directories.
