Current awareness services for law staff or researchers

Current awareness services are a useful way for law staff or researchers to keep up to date with new developments in their field(s) of interest. You can set yourself up to receive updates via email:

• on topics of your choosing
• to include specific types of resource (eg cases, legislation, journal articles, newspaper stories)
• to be sent daily, weekly, monthly or ad-hoc basis.

These pages will show you how to set yourself up to receive current awareness services provided as part of the library's subscriptions to the below services:

Which current awareness service do I use?

Lawtel allows you to receive updates of new material available, including abstracts of news and journal articles, new legislation and summaries of recently heard cases (some cases are also available in full text). Lawtel is marketed as a current awareness service and as such can often be the quickest service to inform you of new and up-to-date information being available.

Lexis®Library allows you to set up regular updates on subject areas or to set scheduled searches to run using exact terms you specify from all the resources available through the database.

Linex Legal produce a weekly email incorporating legal articles and reviews published by leading specialists in all the major practice areas, with articles listed by defined subject headings.

Westlaw allows you to specify exact search terms for your updates, rather than a general subject headings.

Zetoc allows you to set up an alert which can include the tables of contents from specific journals, details of articles by specific authors or details of articles with titles containing specific keywords.

Some law firms also offer free current awareness services and emailed newsletters, primarily for updating clients and to promote their brand. These can often include useful commentary on recent legal developments.

Some of those which are available to subscribe to for free can be found at the below link.