Law Faculty Services: Current awareness

Electronic Tables of Contents (eTOC) Alerts or RSS feeds can be set up so that users are notified when new material is added to a selected title.  Navigate to a title or search for it using the catalog search option. Once on the title, there are buttons for Create eTOC Alert and for RSS. Go to MyHein to see what alerts you have saved.  

The Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) is a current awareness tool that provides listings, by subject, of new articles in law journals.  It is now available on HeinOnline.  From the Hein database page, click into Current Index to Legal Periodicals.  Clicking into Electronic CILP Download Page leads you to a listing of the weekly issues of the CILP.  The most current one is available.  The issues are available in PDF, Word, and Text.  Archives are available by year.

To receive each new issue sent to your inbox, select the Create New SmartCILP User.  Enter your email address and you can create a customized list of articles by subject to receive each week.  SmartCILP can be managed in your MyHein account. 

You may review a list of the most recent month's acquisitions physically located at the Law Library. 

You may also review a list of the most recent month's acquisitions (both print and online...this includes ebooks!) with the Library of Congress's K Classification. 

The BloombergLaw landing page provides current news stories. Top stories on law-related subjects are provided, along with several “Practitioner Insights” written by attorneys from various law firms.

Once signed in to BloombergLaw, there are additional current awareness options.  From the main left-hand menu, select News & Analysis.  Now you have access to news from the Bloomberg Terminal, which provides up-to-the-minute stories, legal and otherwise, under “Latest News”.  Search is also available.  Select “News Search” and you can now do keyword searching, while narrowing to a broad range of sources.  Additional search parameters are available.

Bloomberg Law Analysis provides stories penned by various legal analysts. Selecting View and Filter All Stories, the user can filter by various parameters including topic, court, federal agency, and law firm.  On the News & Analysis menu, select "Bloomberg Law News" to access a broad range of newsletters from Antitrust to White Collar & Criminal Law.  Each newsletter provides focused content, including Practitioner Insights.  Select "Subscribe to Newsletter" in the upper right to create a subscription that provides regular updates pushed to your email.

The Law 360 subscription is another avenue for current awareness.  It provides broad coverage of legal topics and stories.  The main page provides a banner headline and other Top Stories.  Currently, many of these stories cover COVID-19.  Current election coverage is also available.  On the right of the main page, Law 360 offers trending headlines, stories “From the Courtroom”, and an array of expert analyses.

Along the top are several legal topics that get greater coverage.  These include IP, securities, bankruptcy, and employment.  Under each are multiple stories on the topic.  Also, linked on the right, are topic-related analysis and opinion pieces.  A topic of note is Legal Industry.  This provides coverage of the business of law and law practice generally.  As with the other topics, there are analysis and opinion pieces linked on the right.

In addition to browsing, Law 360 has a search option.  Using advanced search, users may search by keyword or phrase.  In addition, news searches can be narrowed by industry, litigation, and region, among other options.  Finally, newsletters are available.  On the main page, access the left-hand menu.  Scroll down and you’ll see “Sign up for our newsletters”.  One can select newsletters by practice area, industry, or state.