Once you have found citations for two or three relevant law review articles, use Boston College's online catalog to find out whether the law reviews you need are available at Boston College and where they will be located. A growing number of law reviews are establishing an electronic presence on the World Wide Web. Lawyers frequently use secondary sources to get references to case law. If you have found a law review article or two on your topic, it will contain citations to the cases or other legal sources it relies upon. To see if there is an ALR Annotation on your topic, use the ALR Index , Law General Collection KF 132 .A48.
Lawyers frequently expand their case law research using a case finding tool called a digest.
A digest arranges brief statements of the points of law found in cases by topic so that once you have found a relevant case, you can easily find other cases on the same topic from any court jurisdiction. The Law Library has digests that cover all United States case law from state and federal courts. The O'Neill Library has a specialty digest, West's Education Law Digest , O'Neill Library Reference KF 4110 .A2 W472, that contains only education law cases. Students working on education law papers will find it easier to use this digest to find references to cases. Cases referenced in the education law digest can be found in West's Education Law Reporter , O'Neill Library Reference KF 4110 .A2 W47 as well as in the federal and state reporters in the Law Library.