Wisconsin State Law Library

Focus On: Legal Resource Index

Do you want to locate articles on a legal topic? Do you have an incomplete journal citation? Have you read something in the Wisconsin Lawyer but forgotten which issue? Do you want to know what articles your colleague has published in the last decade? All these questions, and more, can be answered by using Legal Resource Index.

Legal Resource Index (LRI) is a licensed database that indexes over 800 legal periodicals and newspapers. Updated monthly, LRI currently contains over 900,000 citations to articles published after 1980. While the citations themselves do not provide full text, the State Law Library subscribes to many of the titles indexed by LRI and can provide copies of articles for a fee. For more information contact the Wisconsin State Law Library Reference Dept. at 800-322-9755 or via email.

LRI is available to Court staff as well as to those with library cards issued by the Wisconsin State Law Library, Dane County Law Library, or Milwaukee Legal Resource Center. Temporary access is also available. Contact Wisconsin State Law Library Reference Dept. at 800-322-9755 to apply for a library card or to inquire about temporary access.

LRI may be searched by Keyword, exact Title of an article, Author, Journal Title, a combination of an author’s last name and a few words in the title, or by Library of Congress Subject Headings. Search hints are tailored to each type of search and appear below the search box.

Identifying articles on a topic in LRI is best accomplished by using a keyword search. Search hints for keyword searching are especially important. Remember: a keyword search retrieves only those articles with words in their titles that exactly match your search terms. If you retrieve too many hits, you may want to Limit This Search. For example, to limit your search to articles published in 2000 and 2001, choose: Year of publication After 1999.

If you need to locate an article you read a while ago, first decide in which journal you think it might have appeared. Select Journal Title and enter the name of the journal, eg.,  wisconsin law review (no caps or punctuation needed). Then select Limit This Search. Depending on what you remember about the article, your next choice might be Words in the TITLE or just YEAR of Publication. If you know the article was published within the past few months but you don’t find it in LRI, it may not yet have been indexed.

Upcoming Focus On: topics include "Historic Documents;"  "'What is BadgerLink?" "Judicial Council Materials: A Very Special Collection;" "Native American Resources @ WSLL"