Read newspapers and look for issues that have legal implications to spark your interest. Be careful that the issues are not "too new" - if the only sources that mention the topic are newspapers, you may not have enough scholarly and expert secondary sources to refer to in your paper.
American Lawyer (Available on Lexis Advance)
National Law Journal (Available on Lexis Advance and as a separate UB Database. You must be in the law school building to access this database or login with your UB credentials through the library website).
Wall Street Journal (Available on Lexis Advance)
Stateline Covers state government and political news.
BeSpacific: Blog that covers law, government, non-governmental organizations and technology. Excellent resources for recent Executive Branch, Congressional Research Service (CRS) and General Accountability Office (GAO) reports and other recently released reports and documents.
Mealey's Litigation Reports (Lexis Advance, search by Source) Lists top current awareness sources and analysis on many legal topics.
United States Law Week (Best searched on Bloomberglaw.com) Covers significant cases in all courts, covers all Supreme Court cases. Includes a semi-regular column on Circuit Splits.
Legal News Databases:
Lexis Advance covers over 60 national and regional legal newspapers
Westlaw has similar coverage, including the Maryland Daily Record
Browse these sources to spark ideas for topics and to find the structure of good articles.
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books Indexes legal journals, books, and newspapers. Includes the full-text of some articles. Covers 1908 to date.
Legaltrac Indexes over 1400 law journals and legal newspapers from 1980 to date. It is available on Westlaw as the Legal Resource Index.
Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP): Quick access by subject to new articles with links to Lexis Advance and Westlaw. Also available on Westlaw. If you are a UB student or faculty member and want to subscribe to the weekly email update, SMARTCILP.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Find and download working papers and new and forthcoming articles.
BePress Legal Repository More unpublished, forthcoming and recent articles from law faculty.
Westlaw - Secondary Sources, then Law Reviews and Journals. Coverage varies by publication.
Lexis Advance - Browse by source. Coverage varies by publication.
HeinOnline - Over 1800 journals in full text. Advanced search allows many different search avenues.
*** Important note: Many of these databases require a subscription and are only available to the University of Baltimore School of Law community.