Legal Publications

Legal publications range from books to journals to articles. Know the best places to go to find them.
By James Cahoy Legal publications are the way the law gets disseminated both to lawyers and the mass public. Law books, legal articles and journals of law have become much more accessible.  
 

There are many sources for legal publications available electronically, ranging from collections of articles on specific legal topics to large database archives that contain both legal books and articles on law and cover every area of law imaginable. 

So, if you need to find a journal of law, article or book on a legal subject, what’s the best source? The answer depends on not just what you’re looking for, but how much you want to wade through to find it. 

Here’s what you should know: 

1).        While virtually all law reviews and journals, legal newspapers and magazines are available on the Internet - many times for a price - most law books have not been digitized, with a few notable exceptions.

2).        The more comprehensive and accessible the website containing articles on law or the text of books of law, the more likely it is you will have to pay for it. 

3).        Digitization will continue to increase, and at some point in the future, virtually all legal publications will be available electronically.

If you're looking for full text law articles, know where you need to go to find them

If you have a need for current articles on law, you should know what the best resources are to find full text versions.
Try: Westlaw and Lexis are the gold standard for legal research, and both offer access to all important law reviews and journals, as well as to many books of law, but for a price. Both have credit card options if the user is not a current subscriber. Loislaw.com is a cheaper, if less comprehensive, alternative to Westlaw and Lexis. For free access to a journal of law, one of the best sites is FindLaw, which offers a way to do a search of the law reviews and journals available for free on the internet, and also a listing of law reviews and journals that offer free full text articles from their recent publications.

For books, going to the publishers websites is best

Although you can get legal books from places such as Amazon, publisher sites often give you the best deals on law books, in addition to being more comprehensive.
Try: The biggest publisher of books on law in the United States is currently West, currently owned by Thomson Reuters. It offers a comprehensive store that features a large number of books on almost every legal subject. Outside of West, the biggest legal publisher is Matthew Bender, which also offers a bookstore. It should be noted that West owns Westlaw and Matthew Bender is owned by Lexis. There are also other online bookstores such as LawBooks.com that offer a good selection.

If you need more historical legal publications, you can find them

If your research requires access to older books on law or articles on law, there are several good websites.
Try: HeinOnline offers an amazing list of older law journals, as well as older books of law. It's subscription only, but the subscription is not terribly expensive. If you're interested in holding an older law book in hand rather than reading it online, The Lawbook Exchange offers a collection of older books on law as well as court books and other rarer publications.

• Be careful about pulling up law publications through online searching. Use only reputable and known sites such as the ones listed above.
• Quality free sites for law journals and law books, as opposed to free sites for cases and statutes, are usually difficult to find.
• Be aware that many law books require updates, so you have to pay a subscription for them even though there is no electronic component.