When are practice materials useful?
As the name implies, practice materials are designed to help practicing attorneys quickly and efficiently research. These sources are often organized into the following types of materials:
Practice materials are usually frequently updated.
How do you locate practice materials?
When relevant, practice titles will be provided in a legal research guide. Often, the word "practice" is in the title.
Additionally, Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg are constantly developing their practice pages. You can browse by Practice Area to locate relevant pages. You may also want to check out the following:
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How do you navigate practice materials?
First, remember that practice materials usually contain the materials listed above. You will want to identify which type of material you are looking for, and then narrow down accordingly. Different titles are organized differently. For example, Bloomberg BNA Portfolios provide a wealth of information, but you have to expand them out, and look at both the "Detailed Analysis" section and the "Practice Tools" section.
The best way to navigate practice materials is through a combination of browse and search.
While practice resources are great places to start, they don't always have guidance and samples/examples for your particular issue or area of law. Don't forget other secondary sources, especially treatises!
Often there is one (or a couple) preeminent treatise in your area of law. You can often find these by looking for a legal research guide, or checking out the Georgetown Legal Treatise Finder --the first two links below. You can also browse and search the secondary source titles in Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg, as well as search the library catalog!
When are CLE and Bar Association materials useful?
Continuing Legal Education (CLE) materials can be wonderful sources of information that might not otherwise be included in a treatise, practice guide, law review, or ALR annotation. They are often very jurisdictionally specific. Use them if you are looking for guidance or analysis on a specific practical matter (e.g., a landlord tenant dispute in Pennsylvania), attorney ethics, or a recent development in the law.
How do you locate CLE and Bar Association materials?
The major databases (Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg) all have some CLE materials. Once you are a practicing attorney you will have access to some of the titles via your bar association. You will want to identify the lead publisher of the materials most relevant to you. For example, one of the big publishers of national materials is PLI (the Practising Law Institute). But if you are working in Pennsylvania, you may be most concerned with titles from the Pennsylvania Bar Institute.
You can often locate bar association or CLE materials from their websites (often Googling the issue + CLE or the jurisdiction's bar association is effective, or narrowing to a particular filetype, such as pptx or pdf). However, many times these are behind paywalls.
