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Sources of Free Legal Research: Secondary Resources

Introduction to Free Sources of Secondary Legal Materials

Generally, it is much harder to find free secondary resources than it is to find free sources of primary law.  As an exception to this general rule, law review articles (and other journal articles) are often available for free from the law review's website.  For example, you can access all issues of the Brooklyn Law Review on its website.  Law Review Commons provides a full list of open access law reviews with links to individual law review websites.

Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Works

Google Scholar

This search engine employs the Google algorithm to find relevant scholarly articles using keyword searches. Google Scholar searches both full text articles and abstracts that are available for free online, so users should be aware that not all results will lead to full articles.

Social Science Research Network

Hosts draft abstracts and papers and is an excellent source for the latest scholarship across a wide variety of fields (including law).  Browse to the Legal Scholarship Network to narrow your search to only legal works.

Directory of Open Access Journals

Collects open access journals on all topics, including a legal sub-category.

JSTOR's Open Access Content 

A great subscription source for scholarly materials, and this open access site pulls some of the books and journals from behind the paywall.  Includes thousands of ebooks and millions of articles.  Works best if you click into either the ebooks section or the journals section before searching.

Law Review Commons

Searches over 300 open access law reviews and journals, with some dating back to 1852.  Also includes a subject listing of law reviews/journals.

Law Archive

Yale Law Library's free open access platform for legal scholarship integrating collaboration tools, data storage, and sharing of legal scholarship.  Keyword search or browse by subject.

LLRX

An online journal portal that provides resources for legal research, including topical guides and articles.  Keyword search over 2,500 articles or browse articles by topic.

Guide to Law Online

The Law Library of Congress' annotated collection of online sources of information, including resources for federal law and state law, as well as subject based topic guides.  Brooklyn Law School Library also has Legal Research Guides on a wide variety of subjects.  Legal research guides are a great place to start your research and almost every Law School Library makes their guides available for free on the web.