An important and unique online database that the law library provides access to is Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) BNA is a crucial information source for legal professionals, whether you are a law student or practicing lawyer. BNA publishes, electronically and in print, more than 350 news reports on legal, legislative, and regulatory developments. BNA covers corporate and business law; securities and corporate responsibility; human resources and employee benefits; employment and labor law; intellectual property; tax matters; international law, and more. And the best part is that as a law student you can access many of their daily, weekly, and monthly reports for free.
When you click in to the BNA database, consider sorting by subjects unless you know exactly which report you want to read. The front page of each report highlights the current news. However, you can search that particular report by using the basic or advanced search feature or you can simply browse the report. For those areas of law that interest you the most, consider setting up an e-mail alert and receiving the report via email. What better way to stay current on what is happening in a particular sector of the law.
Just recently, BNA added a new feature to their database. By clicking on “Search my BNA” in the upper right on all the reports, you can now search multiple publications at the same time. You are no longer limited to searching within a single publication and then moving on to the next. This feature means you can search all the business and corporate securities publications at once for your topic of interest. This new feature truly expands the capabilities of BNA and makes it an even more useful database tool.
Written by Stacey Bowers, Outreach & Instructional Services Coordinator
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