Stress-Free Current Awareness Resources for Journal Students


September 8, 2021

When you’re writing a law review comment or note, one essential part of the process is keeping aware of developments in your topic area. You’ll want to know about any game-changing news or legal developments so that your work isn’t outdated on arrival.

Luckily, there are ways to automate current awareness. This post will cover two helpful resources – Bloomberg Law and Law360 – that will send relevant legal news and updates right to your inbox.

Bloomberg Law

You might already be familiar with Bloomberg Law as a legal research database, but it is also a great current awareness tool because of its newsletter subscriptions and search alerts.

Newsletter subscriptions will deliver daily news in a topic area of your choosing sent straight to your inbox. Subscribing is easy: begin by selecting “subscribe to newsletters” on the Bloomberg Law homepage

From there you are taken to the Subscription & Alert Management page, where you can simply select the newsletters you would like to subscribe to.

Another helpful tool for current awareness is Bloomberg’s search alerts. A search alert will direct Bloomberg to run a search of your choosing daily, weekly, or hourly, and alert you of any new material. You can keep multiple alerts organized with titles, descriptions, and tags.

To create a search alert, simply run a search in Bloomberg and then select “Create Alert” at the top of the results page.

From there, you can filter your desired frequency and add descriptions to the request. Search alert hits will be sent to your email, as well as the Subscription & Alert Management page.

Law360

Bloomberg Law isn’t the only source for current awareness newsletters. Law360 (accessible to the UNC law community through their Lexis+ accounts) has its own formidable array of newsletters.

Beginning at the Lexis homepage, select “Legal News Hub” on the far left side of the screen.

From the Legal News Hub, select the “More” drop down tab from the top of the screen and choose the area of law you are interested in. From there, simply select “subscribe to newsletter” at the top of the screen.

These two convenient resources will help make sure your journal note is as up to date as possible. If you’d like information and resources, check out the Legal News Sources page of our Newspapers research guide.