U.S. Law Week includes a monthly "Circuit Splits" Feature (the link is under Key Features on the left).
After you decide on a general topic/area of law, you can search in full-text law reviews on LexisNexis to narrow the focus of your paper. It's a little hit and miss but worth a try. The idea is to pinpoint articles in which the author has mentioned a topic in need of further research.
I've included a sample search using the Fourth Amendment as the area of law. Include the "OR" connector in your Lexis search for synonyms or variations of the same word.
LexisNexis search:
"FOURTH AMENDMENT" near/20 ("OPEN QUESTION" OR "INTERESTING TOPIC" OR "ARTICLE TOPIC")
In Lexis Advance, select Secondary Sources and, if desired, limit by the categories on the left.
Legal newsletters and newspapers are published daily, weekly and monthly and are used to keep practitioners, academics and other legal researchers current in a particular area of law (e.g. health law, employment law, tax law, etc). By searching these short articles, you will be able to pinpoint current areas of controversy. This presumes that you already have a general topic in mind and would like to narrow your focus.
LexisNexis allows you to search legal news by practice area. Here's the trail: Legal > Legal News > Legal News by Practice Area.
 |  |  |  |
© The Regents of the University of California. UCLA School of Law. All Rights Reserved.