A newsletter from West providing Westlaw® search tips for corporate counsel and staff

Practicing attorneys often turn to law review articles in their legal research-but not out of academic curiosity. For the busy attorney, law review articles can provide

Further, law review articles are thoroughly researched and reviewed. If you find a law review article on point, much of your own legal research may already be done.

Yet it's not easy to search law review articles online—especially by subject matter.

First, unlike a case, a law review article is not supplied with a synopsis, headnotes, West key number classifications, or other enhancements containing terms that describe important concepts from the article. If the author only used the term takings and never used the term eminent domain, for example, the query "eminent domain" would miss the article entirely.

Second, many law review articles have titles that are fanciful or catchy (e.g., "Roll Over Beethoven") rather than descriptive of the topic. As a result, you could miss relevant documents if you restrict your search to the title field (ti).

One solution: the Natural Language search method

If you aren't satisfied with your initial search result, you might try using the Natural Language search method. Law review databases—like other databases containing large numbers of lengthy documents—are often a good fit for Natural Language searching. With Natural Language, you retrieve the documents that contain your search terms in the highest concentration. For example, access the Journals and Law Reviews database (JLR) and enter a Natural Language description such as liability of web site owner for comments posted on online chat room.

It doesn't matter if your terms aren't in the article titles.

In many areas, there are one or two landmark cases, statutes, or other primary authorities that are mentioned in every serious analysis. For example, a thorough discussion of the tax consequences of prizes and awards will almost certainly mention 26 U.S.C.A. § 74.

If you suspect that every law review article on your issue will mention a particular case or statute, then here's a tip about searching for these law review articles: Don't bother. Instead, start with the case, statute, or primary document. Then click a link to display a list of citing references.

To retrieve the document, click Find&Print at the top of the page and type the citation in the Find this document by citation text box. To retrieve a list of KeyCite citing references, e.g., law review articles that cite the primary law document, click Citing References on the Links tab in the left frame. To limit the list of citing references, click Limit KeyCite Display at the bottom of the KeyCite citing references result.

If you are viewing a statute or regulation, you can simply click Law Reviews under Analysis on the Links tab to view a list of law review articles.

Need more help? Call the West Reference Attorneys at 1-800-REF-ATTY (1-800-733-2889).