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Current Awareness

How to stay current on legal issues.

About This Guide

The purpose of this guide is to educate and inform faculty and students about the automated current awareness and tracking features available in the law library's electronic resources.  For information on creating alerts in a particular database, select the tab for the resource (or category of information) for which you desire an alert.  The resulting page will provide you with information about alert creation, management, and editing, as well as video tutorials specific to that database. 

Types of Alerts

Current Awareness resources are divided into two types:

  1. News
  2. Databases

Alerts and current awareness tools come in three primary forms:

  1. Saved Searches. Once you create a search string in a database, the database will run the you have crafted at preset intervals and send the results to you automatically, usually by email.
  2. Case Docket or Legislative Tracking. You can set the case you want to monitor, or the bill you want to follow, and the database will monitor all activity for a given case or piece of legislation. For cases, actions which will normally trigger an alert include appeals, major filings, and orders. You can customize your alert within the database chosen.
  3. News Feeds and Alerts. News services send you articles and posts as they are published, either viewable through an rss feed reader or received by email if an alert is chosen.