8.3 Legal Periodicals

• Library: A Guide to Legal Research in Virginia (Virginia CLE) (2021 Ed.)

8.3 LEGAL PERIODICALS

Legal periodicals are the dominant form of publication for legal scholars and serve as a repository for contemporary legal scholarship. They present varied perspectives on legal subjects ranging from elementary to complex policy arguments, keep researchers informed of developing and changing areas of law, offer deep analysis and critique of specific topics, and provide researchers with extensive footnotes that enable them to discover important primary and secondary sources. There are four general types of legal periodicals: (i) law reviews or journals published by law schools; (ii) bar association periodicals; (iii) legal newspapers; and (iv) legal periodicals published by commercial publishers. Each of these can be general, subject-specific, or interdisciplinary..

Legal periodicals can be located both online and in print. Many law journals are easily accessible from digital repositories provided by law school libraries, in web-based archives available at journals' websites, in pre-publication format at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN.com), or simply through a keyword search on Google Scholar.

SSRN is an online platform "devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks."⁸ The law network on SSRN is highly developed, with many experts and scholars posting in SSRN's two collections: (1) a database containing abstracts on over 950,000 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers; and (2) an electronic paper collection currently containing over 816,000 downloadable full-text documents in PDF format. In addition to the self-publishing done by authors on SSRN, most legal periodicals provide access to their publication online via the journal's website or, if the journal is affiliated with a law school, an institutional repository. Oftentimes this online access is available free of charge to the public and is "Google optimized," making it easy to find through a simple Google search. In the alternative, some publications are only available to purchase in print or electronically from the journal or via a database such as HeinOnline, LexisNexis, or Westlaw.

Legal periodicals contain different types of articles. The most common article types are:

• Lead article—authored by an expert scholar on a topic containing an exhaustive analysis of the topic;

• Symposium article—an issue of a law review composed exclusively of articles that focus on a narrow subject of law and feature the remarks of participants on that topic at a recent symposium hosted by the journal;

• Special feature article—an issue of a law review composed exclusively of articles that focus on recent developments in an area of law, narrow or broad, or on recent legislative actions found in an annual survey of the law;

• Note or comment—sometimes unsigned and often a student piece that is typically a short, critical analysis of a specific area of the law or a specific case, usually a recent decision, and typically not cited as authority in support of an argument;

• Book review—a comment on a new or recent publication regarding the legal profession or legal education of interest to lawyers or legal scholars; and

• Essay, commentary, or response—a shorter work that is usually an opinion piece regarding a particular issue or a scholar's response or reply to a previously published work. These pieces are typically lightly footnoted and often published in the online companion publication of the journal.

8.301 School-Related Journals and Reviews. Differing from the peer-review practice in other academic disciplines, the law review is typically student-edited. Virginia's eight law schools publish many law reviews and journals. Some law reviews in Virginia have long, distinguished histories and traditions while others are newer, specialty titles focusing on narrow, cutting-edge topics at the state, national, and international levels. Many of the articles are easily accessible through a simple search, if the article title is known, or through a keyword search. Alternatively, articles are often accessible from an institutional repository linked from the school law library's home page or the journal's website.

Legal periodicals have traditionally been published only in print. With the rise of the "open access" movement in the 1990s and the rise in printing costs, many institutional law reviews have chosen to move their content to an online format only. These online journals are hosted either on the law review's own website or in the institution's repository, oftentimes free of charge to the researcher. The legal periodicals currently being published, electronically or in print, by Virginia law schools are listed below.

A. Appalachian School of Law.

• Appalachian Journal of Law, 2002-present.

B. George Mason...