Finding a Paper Topic

Student Study Aids

Study aids of can be a great resource to fill in the back ground knowledge you lack on subject so that you can find a topic and write the paper.  They are generally, not what you want to cite in you paper though.  I recommend two:

• West Academic Nutshells

• West Academic Hornbooks

West Academic Nutshells and Hornbooks can be found at the library's databases' page at http://umkclaw.link/db. You will need to sign onto WestAcademic with your SSO.  You can also register and create a password so that you can take notes and highlight materials in the database.

Treatises & Looseleafs

Many treatises and Looseleafs (a set of notebooks that are updated regularly) are available to law students and faculty on the major services of Lexis+, Westlaw Edge and Bloomberg.  Lexis+ is particularly strong because it ownes the Matthew Bender and MoBar CLE publications.  Below is screenshot of the "Sources" page in Lexis+ but filtered for "Mathew Bender."

You can get to Treatises and Looseleafs through a variety of different ways besides the "Sources" tab on the Lexis+ splash page.  Ask a librarian for assistance.  You can use chat with us during normal business hours, email us at umkclawlibrary@umkc.edu, or call 816-235-1650.  Below are just two examples from Lexis+.

Below are two examples of treatises and looseleafs available on Lexis+.

• Lexis+ Law of the Internet

• MOBAR CLE Missouri Intellectual Property

Of course, Weslaw also has treatises listed in its secondary materials.  Bloomberg Law has "portfolios" and is particularly strong in tax materials, and is a favorite of practicitioners. It also covers banking practice, corporate practice, securities, health law, and privacy and data security (to find: Splash Page > Browse (uper left corner) > Browse Secondary Sources > Browse BNA Porfolios).

General Encyclopedias

For background general encyclopedias are good for building background on basic legal concepts.  The following are useful tools:

• American Jurisprudence 2nd (Westlaw Edge and on Lexis+) "This comprehensive legal encyclopedia contains textual statements of law alphabetically arranged in more than 400 topics."
• Corpus Juris Secundum (Westlaw Edge) "Cited and quoted as authority in courtrooms across the country, C.J.S., a national legal encyclopedia, covers state and federal legal topics from A to Z. General rules of law are summarized in blackletter law headings and expanded upon in the text. "
• American Law Reports (Westlaw Edge and on Lexis+) ALR is encyclopedic in scope but comes out chronologically with articles based on select cases or statutes.  It is both a primary law and secondary resource. It is constantly updated. It has a good digest for access. It will lay out your research path for you.
• Missouri Practice Series (Westlaw Edge) A comprehensive encyclopedia of Missouri law. Although more limited in the topics covered, some practitioners prefer the MoBar CLE set referred to in the section on Treatises and Looseleafs.