The University of Alabama School of Law
The University of Alabama School of Law
The Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) is a publication that was issued by the University of Washington School of Law’s Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library. CILP was produced by UW for nearly 90 years until the William S. Hein & Co., Inc. acquired the rights to CILP in February, 2020.
Every week, HeinOnline editors of CILP index hundreds of articles from U.S. general and specialized law journals, assigning each article one or more subject headings. Through CILP, legal researchers are able to receive timely, topical access to more than 650 legal publications organized within 104 relevant subject headings, many grouped into broader topics such as Banking and Finance or Criminal Law and Procedure.
As detailed below, there are currently three options to receive CILP content
UA Law faculty and staff can create customized alerts of recently-published legal scholarship using HeinOnline’s SmartCILP feature.
Creating a SmartCILP alert allows users to receive a weekly list of CILP articles currated to just the specific law journals and/or subject headings chosen by the user. Conveniently, the weekly list also includes hyperlinks to articles in HeinOnline's Law Journal Database.
To create a SmartCILP alert, faculty and staff should go directly to Hein’s SmartCILP Form. The blank SmartCILP Form should initially look like the image below. Start by entering the intended recipient’s e-mail address and then click Create/Update.
Users should then see an expanded list of article topics, subject headings, and law journal titles. Check as many topics, subject headings, and journal titles as needed.
Note that when you select topics, Hein may automatically populate subject headings and subject-specific law journals related to those topics. Note also that selecting journal titles in addition to subject headings will mean that the weekly SmartCILP alert will include both articles indexed by the selected journals, regardless of subject matter, as well as any articles with the chosen subject heading(s), regardless of whether they appear in the selected journals.
For more information about SmartCILP, see the official HeinOnline Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) guide, which includes a list of all SmartCILP Topics and Subjects.
HeinOnline provides an archive of the weekly CILP publication going back to 1936 on the CILP Archives webpage, arranged by year. Users can go to the page and select the year and issue of choice to download a PDF copy of the issue.
Users can also sign up to receive a personal alert each time an issue of CILP is added to the archive. Alerts may be recieved either via Table of Contents email alerts (eTOC) or via RSS. Users can manage these alerts via their personal MyHein account. Instructions on how to do that are available elsewhere in this guide.
Note the CILP Archives page typically lags the current issue of CILP by several weeks to a month. The most recent issue is instead available on the HeinOnline Electronic CILP Download Page. At this time, the HeinOnline Electronic CILP Download Page does not support eTOC or RSS alerts.
Alabama Law faculty who would like to be included on a weekly email distribution list of the most recent issue of CILP should contact Lauren Hash (lhash@law.ua.edu).