LAW 307 / GRSJ 303 - Women, Law & Social Change

• Legal periodicals include law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association periodicals and interdisciplinary journals. They can be general in scope (such as the U.B.C. Law Review) or focused on a specific subject (e.g., the Canadian Journal of Women & the Law).
• Locating law journal articles on a topic that you are researching can be invaluable and 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.
• Articles often provide a good introduction to the law in emerging areas and in areas of the law undergoing change.
• ’Case comments’ discussing the background and effect of significant cases are also published in legal periodicals.
• Because policy analysis is often a focus of many law periodical articles, the articles also help in understanding the law and in developing persuasive arguments.
• Note: There are different types of articles, and an article’s type will affect its ‘authoritative value’. For example, an article written by a judge or law professor would have more ‘weight’ than a note or comment written by a student, or a brief article in a legal newspaper. Always evaluate the sources that you want to rely on.

There are two methods of searching for legal periodical articles: using periodical indexes and full-text searching.

• Index searching involves looking for relevant articles using the subject, author, title, keyword, or other fields that have been 'indexed' by subject specialists.
• Articles found using indexes tend to be more relevant, because the retrieved articles are connected to the indexed search terms. In contrast, a full-text search will return any articles in the database that mention the search words used, regardless of the topic of the article. In other words, a full-text search results in a greater number of irrelevant hits.
• Periodical indexes provide the most thorough coverage of articles published in law journals.
• Periodical indexes allow you to focus your research by looking for journal articles from a particular jurisdiction or jurisdictions e.g. Canada, the U.S., the U.K., European Union, and foreign jurisdictions.
• Full-text searching can be useful when you want to locate articles about a narrowly-defined topic or you have unique keywords to use.

All online legal periodical indexes can be accessed via the Law Library homepage by clicking on Legal Periodicals Indexes.

Finding Full Text Journals (Online Or In Print)
If you are not in a database that provides full text, it is relatively straightforward to find a copy of the article (online or in print).
Follow these steps:

• Make a note of the citation.
• Decipher unfamiliar abbreviations. (Use online abbreviations sources, accessible from the Law Library homepage's Citation link, or the McGill Guide - LAW LIBRARY learning commons (level 2) & reference room (level 2): KE259 C35 2018, Appendix C.)
• From UBC Library menu bar, use the Search Collections pull-down menu to select Journals and enter particular title.

Example with full text available:

• Enter UBC Law Review in the Journals search box.
• Choose HeinOnline Law Journal Library.
• Click on 2008.
• Select first article, starting on page 1.

How to print or save a pdf:

• Ensure the full screen is open so the printer icon on the top far-right is visible.
• Click on the printer icon.
• You can choose to download the whole article, or select pages - click the print/download button.
• It takes just a few seconds to download an article and then it can be read online, saved, or printed.

Example with print version only:

• Enter Supreme Court Law Review in the Journals search box.
• Note the locations
• Click on UBC Print Holdings.

To find journal articles, use one or more of the following legal periodical indexes: