Legal Research

LegalTrac: Searching by Subject

By Amy Levine

LegalTrac is a great database to use when you are looking for articles in legal publications.  It includes citations to law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals and international law journals.  According to the publisher there are presently about 875 publications included on LegalTrac. 

You can connect to LegalTrac by selecting it from the Recommended Databases pull down menu on the law library home page.  After connecting, the resulting page is the Subject Guide Search page.  Instead of starting your search here click on the Advanced Search link at the top of the page.  The Advanced Search page allows you to tailor your search by selecting various fields, including keyword, author, document title, and publication title.  There are many more.  Also, you can limit your results to peer reviewed publications and by publication date.  After crafting your search, click on the blue Search button.  So, where does subject come in?

When you arrive at your results page you will see links to articles.  After selecting one article you will see a list of subjects on the left side of the page and the number of articles found under each subject.  If you see a subject that fits your issue click on it to get a more narrow result.  In this way you can find more relevant publications, and increase the efficiency of your search.  Stay tuned for more tips.

Full post as published by Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).