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LegalTrac

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LegalTrac, produced by The Gale Group, is an index of legal journal and legal newspaper literature from 1980 to date. It indexes the legal periodical literature of all countries with particular emphasis on the common law countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). Many of the index entries are accompanied by an abstract and some include the full text of the article. 

LegalTrac was designed to be searched using the Netscape Navigator browser but is also compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Search Tips:

LegalTrac offers three ways to search:

  • By subject
  • By key word or
  • Advanced Searching
  • If you are just beginning your research, key word searching is probably the best method to use. Word order and proximity are irrelevant if you connect your key words with the Boolean operator "AND." If you think that a word might appear as a plural or with some other variant ending, use an asterisk at the end of the word as a root expander.

Example: To locate articles that discuss liability to spectators at a baseball game who are hit by fly balls, try the following search: baseball* and liability.

Printing tips:

After you have done your search, mark those citations in which you are interested by using your mouse to click on the box next to the citation. Click on "Mark List" which will eliminate the citations you are not interested in. Click on either "E-mail Checked" to send your search results to your e-mail address or print out a hard copy using your browser's print function.