Just for the fun of it, I've made a webpage that dispenses advice on
what U.S. legal periodicals should be purchased with any user-selected
budget. It's at http://law.wlu.edu/library/mostcited/selecting.asp
Aside from entering what you want to spend, you may specifically select
any of the listed periodicals for inclusion (you'd do that if you wished
to include to some lower cost-effective-ranked journals, perhaps because
of their jurisdictional or subject interest).
Once you submit the page it will return with a title listing of:
(a) the periodicals you actively selected (if any) and their total
price,
(b) periodicals, in cost-effective order, that are within your budget
(c) excluded periodicals, in cost-effective order, outside your budget
(d) other U.S. periodicals from the "most-cited" list that are excluded
because they have an unknown or a zero price
The lists don't include non-U.S. titles (except for a few that are
published elsewhere but have strong U.S. connections, e.g. the official
journal of a U.S. association that might be published in England or the
Netherlands).
Journal prices are those paid by U.S. academic libraries. The price
figures come from those paid by W&L Law Library, or as shown on the
journal's webpage, or as given in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory. If
anyone wants to correct a price I'd be happy to receive corrections.
John Doyle
Washington & Lee Law School