Preemptive Measures

Around this halfway point of the semester, many law students are thinking about potential topics for their seminar papers, law journal notes, and/or other scholarly writing projects. In the first year at Duke Law, professors determine the topic of LARW writing assignments – after that, students are largely on their own. This can be a difficult adjustment for many, since topic selection is a critical stage of the academic writing process. Authors must find a potential topic that is both interesting and novel, and examine it from an angle that has not previously been explored in great depth by prior publications. The associated process of preemption checking can seem frustrating and overwhelming, as it often results in false starts and discarded potential topics. Fortunately, the Goodson Law Library has resources to help students navigate the maze.

Some guidebooks on academic legal writing are available in the Reserve collection, and may be borrowed for four hours at a time:

• Volokh, Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review, 5th ed. Course Reserve KF250 .V65 2016.
  This textbook for Duke's Scholarly Writing Workshop course offers great advice for finding potential topic ideas from recent litigation, news stories, and even your other course textbooks.
• Fajans & Falk, Scholarly Writing for Law Students: Seminar Papers, Law Review Notes and Law Review Competition Papers, 5th ed. Reserve KF250 .F35 2017.
  Early chapters include guidance for "Exploration: choosing and narrowing a topic" and "Inspiration: finding and developing a thesis."
• Clark, Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution, 2d ed. Reserve KF250 .C528 2012.
  Like the other titles above, this one begins with a section for selecting and narrowing a topic.

These texts all stress the importance of not only finding an original angle on a topic, but also finding a topic that deeply interests you – the process of researching and drafting a scholarly-length article is time-consuming, and finding a topic about which you are passionate will help keep your momentum.

When you have a preliminary topic idea in mind, it is important to conduct a preemption check to ensure that another author has not already covered your planned approach to the topic. While the specific sources for a preemption check may vary depending upon the topic of your paper, the following categories of works should always be consulted:

• Already-published articles can be found in a variety of sources, including the journal and law review databases on Westlaw, Lexis Advance, and LegalTrac (generally dating back to 1981). Google Scholar and Academic Search Complete are both good options for locating both legal and non-legal articles. For historical articles, try HeinOnline and JSTOR.
• Pre-publication articles or working papers can be searched at SSRN and Bepress Digital Commons Network, both large repositories for authors to make their work publicly accessible.
• Books and book chapters should also be a part of your search process. Try Google Books, WorldCat, and of course the Duke Libraries Catalog for your topic keywords.
• Dissertations and theses might eventually be republished in book format, but you can also search for more than two million unpublished dissertations in the database ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Full-text PDFs are provided for many of the indexed titles.
• General web searching should help uncover discussion of your topic in mainstream news publications, on various blogs, and other publicly-accessible websites. Remember that you will receive different results depending upon the order of your search terms and your chosen search engine. Explore the search engine's advanced features and help documentation for guidance on forming your search.
• Specialized legal news sources like Law360, Law.com, and Bloomberg BNA publications will generally not appear in web search results, or if they do, you will see only an introductory snippet and a login prompt. But you can search these sources directly, as well as other specialized resources that may be applicable, via our Legal Databases & Links page.

Once you feel confident that your selected topic is workable, the research process doesn't stop – you'll need to keep your research up to date. You can set alerts on the legal research services, as well as Google Alerts, the Duke Libraries Catalog, and many other sources to stay informed of new developments. For help with that process, or with any other aspect of topic selection and preemption checking, be sure to Ask a Librarian.