Picking a Paper Topic

• Surveying the terrain- new legal developments and new trends.
• Find background information on something that interests you. 
• Unresolved problems - Articles can provide a general idea of current key issues or controversies related to your topic.
• Finding different points of view can provide you with a better sense of direction.
• High profile cases and below the surface cases are first discussed in legal news and blogs.
• Pending legislation- federal and state bills.
• Hot topics and emerging issues- yes but what else does this news item show?  Do you recognize any patterns over time? Does the current controversy analogize with a similar historic problem? (are we doomed to repeat ourselves?)  Are these news articles symptoms of a larger problem?
• Serendipity!  You are searching and reading about a topic and then you come across a different idea by accident.

Legal blogs are written by law faculty, lawyers, judges and law librarians.Check blogs for current legal news and commentary.

Some of these news sources offer RSS feeds to keep up with the daily postings.

Also look at the news databases on Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law.

Databases

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