American Law Reports (ALR) are smaller, but in depth annotations or articles about specific legal topics. These annotations will include summary and analysis for the specific area of law, as well as citations to multi-jurisdictional primary and secondary sources. An ALR annotation on your topic is an excellent resource because it will save you a lot of time researching for additional materials. The annotations are often more detailed than encyclopedia entries. However, unlike encyclopedia entries, ALR annotations do not exist for every legal topic. They are focused more so on unsettled, controversial, or developing legal issues.
ALRs are organized into series, including numbered and federal series. There exist the 1st through (now) 7th series as well as the federal 1st through (now) 3rd series. Entries in the different series are easily located via index. ALRs are available on both Westlaw and Lexis. When searching in print, use the index volumes to locate annotations/topics in both the regular and federal-numbered series.
