Beginning your research and looking for a law review article? Don’t automatically logon to Westlaw or LexisNexis. The best places to begin your search electronically are Index to Legal Periodicals & Books (ILP) and LegalTrac. As of October 14, 2011, LegalTrac indexed 1,602,097 articles published between 1980 and 2011; it is updated daily during the week. Index to Legal Periodicals & Books is divided into two separate databases: (1) Legal Periodicals and Books, citing articles from law reviews, bar association journals, university publications, yearbooks, institutes, and government publications - and indexing law books from 1982 to the present; (2) Legal Periodicals Retro, which includes citations from the print editions of Index to Legal Periodicals from 1908 to 1981. Users can use ILP’s databases individually or simultaneously to search for materials from 1908 to the present.
Both databases, at a minimum, provide citation information to articles through sophisticated search engines. Additionally, each also provides abstracts or the full text of articles depending on individual contracts with publishers. Because they both index more periodical titles than can be found either Westlaw or LexisNexis, and provide more complete coverage of those periodical titles, they are a better alternative when searching for law review articles. Armed with a citation, your article can then be accessed (depending on holdings) from Westlaw, LexisNexis, Hein Online or the law library’s robust print collection.