Other Sources | Current Law Index (CLI)
Critical knowledge & skills for the Law Library

| There are literally hundreds of legal periodicals, The Duke Law Review. The Environmental Law Journal. The ABA Journal. And hundreds more. The general rule of legal research is to begin in the index. So does this mean the researcher would have to go to the index of each of these hundreds of sets? Well, it gets worse! The majority of these periodicals DO NOT HAVE THEIR OWN INDEXES! So, what do you do? The Current Law Index is a very useful tool when attempting to locate a periodical article. It indexes almost all legal periodicals.
| THE INDEX (?) This set of books is, in fact, one massive index. The books are arranged by year, with a new set of indexes coming out each year. In addition, each year indexes the material by subject matter, as well as by the title of the article or the name of the author.
| THE MAIN VOLUME The researcher may want to start in the most recent year covered by CLI, then work backwards. If researching a topic (as is usually the case), locate the volume that contains the subject matter index. If researching a specific article or author, simply locate the volume called "Author/Title."
| MORE . . . The drawback to legal periodical research is that even if you find a cite to an article, your law library may not carry that periodical! That really hurts! The best suggestion is to contact the supreme court law library in your state. If they have the article, they will probably fax it to you for free. Otherwise, contact the publisher of the periodical to see if any library in your area subscribes.