Locating a current law journal article on your topic can save you hours of research time. Journal articles tend to focus on narrower legal issues and the authors, usually academics and practitioners in a field, provide informed analysis of the law and references to relevant case law and legislation. Journal articles are especially useful for commentary on emerging areas of the law, and areas undergoing change.
The following indexes provide the most thorough coverage of articles published in law journals.
Canada | British Columbia | United States & Beyond | United Kingdom & European Union | Australia & New Zealand | Foreign | Full Text Periodical Databases
Canada
- Index to Canadian Legal Literature (ICLL)
provides thorough coverage of Canadian law journal articles. In addition to articles, case comments and annotations for more than 200 Canadian legal and law-related periodicals, ICLL indexes books, individual essays from edited collections, federal and provincial government publications, and publications of law faculties and legal research institutes and associations, including theses. Due to restrictions on the number of simultaneous users, law students and faculty should access ICLL via their individual Westlaw Canada or LexisNexis Quicklaw accounts. A print version covering the time period from the 1880’s to the present is located in the Reference Room (level 2): KE1 .I53 (LC).
- Index to Canadian Legal Periodical Literature (1998-) covers over 20,000 texts including articles published in more than a hundred Canadian law journals, legal articles published in journals from related fields, texts from legal conferences, and case comments.
- A print version covering the time period 1961 – 2006 provides references to some law-related articles not found in ICLL and also includes an Author/Title Index, a Table of Cases and a Book Review Index. The print index is in the Reference Room (level 2): KE1 .I53 (LC).
British Columbia
United States and Beyond
- Legal Periodicals & Books (1982- ) provides thorough coverage of American law journals, and selective coverage of law journals from various Commonwealth countries, including Canada. It indexes articles from over 615 law journals, and provides subject access to over 2000 law books annually.
- Legal Periodicals Retrospective indexes articles covering the years 1908-1981, and is a good source for early Canadian journal articles.
- LegalTrac (1980- ) is a comprehensive periodical index that indexes over 800 law journals, including bar association journals and legal newspapers. It provides links to some full text, and includes selective coverage of British Commonwealth, European Union and international law journals. In addition, it indexes many of the same American law journals as Legal Periodicals & Books.
United Kingdom and European Union
- Legal Journals Index (LJI) indexes over 700 law journals from the UK, EU, and Ireland, and provides citations to articles, case law, and legislative comments. LJI is also available on Westlaw Canada (identifier: LJI)
Australia & New Zealand
- AGIS Plus Text
(Attorney-General’s Information Service) (1975- ) AGIS indexes over 130 law journals from Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region. Full text coverage is provided from 1999 onward.
Foreign
- Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (1985- ) via HeinOnline IFLP indexes articles and book reviews in over 500 legal journals published worldwide. This multilingual index provides in-depth coverage of comparative and foreign law, public and private international law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. A print version covering the period 1960-1995 is located in the Reference Room (level 2): K 33 I527 (LC).
FULL TEXT PERIODICAL DATABASES:
While it may seem appealing to head directly to an electronic source that offers full text journal articles, it is important to keep in mind that the coverage of journals in full text databases is not as comprehensive as the coverage provided by the legal periodical indexes. In addition, full text searching tends to retrieve a larger number of irrelevant articles.
However, full text searching can be useful when you want to locate articles about a narrowly-defined topic; you have unique keywords to use; or you are searching for a known item.
- HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library provides full text access to over 1,600 law and law-related periodicals.
- Google Scholar
Google scholar is designed to provide easy access to scholarly literature (i.e. peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, technical reports) published by academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities.
- Legal Scholarship Network (LSN), a division of the Social Science Research Network, enables legal scholars to distribute and share their research worldwide by providing free access to their scholarly papers.
- LexisNexis Quicklaw and LexisNexis Academic provide users with access to a selective list of full text law journals.
- Westlaw Canada provides users with access to articles and case comments published in Carswell print law reports and in a selective list of full text law journals.
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UBC Law Library Reference Staff
