Law Review: Law Library Support for Members of the Boston College Law Review

The BC Law Library provides some great resources to get your writing project off on the right foot:

• Research for Upper Level Writing from A Short and Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research, Second Edition, 2022. (accessible through BC's subscription to West Academic Study Aids).
• Volokh, Eugene, Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, Fifth Edition, 2016. Law General Collection   KF250 .V65 2016.
• Fajans, Elizabeth, Scholarly Writing for Law Students: Seminar papers, law review notes and law review competition papers, Fifth Editoin, 2017. Law General Collection and Permanent Reserve KF 250 F35 2017,

Some ways to locate a topic include:

• Check legal news to identify unsettled areas of the law or hot topics.  You can even subscribe to email updates.
• Take a look at 50 state surveys and state law subject compilations.
• Look for a federal circuit split on an issue.
• Attend events around the law school to learn about current legal topics and timely issues.
• Read blogs and listen to podcasts.
• Talk to a librarian if you are having difficulty finding a topic.

The purpose of preemption checking is to make sure you have a new and novel topic or a new perspective on a topic which has been written about.  Also, the preemption check will help you determine that there are sufficient legal sources for you to pursue the topic.

Don't give up on a topic too soon.  If you are locating articles already discussing your topic, can you adjust your topic or approach it in a new way?  Are you able to critique another author's analysis and bring new light to an issue?  Can you compare how the issue has been addressed in other jurisdictions and other countries?  Think about various ways to tweak your topic so you can bring a new voice to the academic discussion.

What to do if you find nothing? If you aren't finding anything on your topic, is it because there is nothing there or is it that you are looking in the wrong place or in the wrong way?  If there is absolutely nothing, you may want to reconsider your search terms.  Look at the sources you plan on citing to in your note and Shepardize or KeyCite them to find out how other scholars have referred to them.

Keep a detailed record of your searches.  It's a long time between initial preemption checking and final publication.  A detailed research log or notebook will help you revisit your research to double check facts and citations.  Complete citations and detailed notes will make this easier. Remember, prior to publication, you will want to update all primary sources and watch for preempting articles.  Knowing what you have already done, including the dates of searches, can save you loads of time and effort down the road.  Your future self will thank you!

Library catalogs can help note writers track down books on or related to your note topic. 

Law review indexes are great to search because they index law reviews with a limited number of subject terms also known as a controlled vocabulary. So, even if you use alternate terminology, you can find articles on your topic.

Full-text law review databases are another tool in addition to indexes, which provide access to a variety of published law review articles.  You can use these searches to develop your topic or as part of your preemption check.

Keep a few tips in mind to get the most out of your search:

• For the most precise results, use Boolean search logic. (AND, OR, NOT)
• Keyword or natural language searching will yield less precise results than a Boolean search.
• Lexis is primarily a Boolean search with relevancy ranked results.  Make use of the Search Tips link to have Lexis add connectors for you and learn more about the connectors available for you to search with.
• Westlaw will automatically add related terms to your search and present results in a crowd-sourced relevancy ranking.  This means items most frequently accessed are listed first.  Take advantage of Terms & Connectors searches and the advanced search templates on Westlaw to create more precise searches.

Article abstract indexes and electronic paper collections, such as Social Science Research Network (SSRN), are great tools for preemption checking.  These tools allow writers to check the abstracts and pre-publication drafts of papers by a variety of authors in different subject areas.  Within SSRN, note writers may want to focus on the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN).

You can identify issues over which federal circuit courts have split using:

• US Law Week: Circuit Splits (Bloomberg Law)
• American Law Reports (Westlaw): browse cases on a topic, which  are separated into how each jurisdiction decided the issues.
• Search legal news for circuit splits

Read about or listen to discussion of current developments in the law: