4.1.4 Doing Legal Research: Lexis and Westlaw
Description
This article is from the Legal Research FAQ, by Mark Eckenwiler with numerous contributions by others.
4.1.4 Doing Legal Research: Lexis and Westlaw
Two companies, the ubiquitous West Publishing (Westlaw) and
Mead Data (Lexis), provide online facilities for legal researchers.
While the two systems have a variety of distinguishing features --
Westlaw is generally more up-to-date and includes its proprietary
key number headnotes in the cases, while Lexis is easier to use
overall, has more finely subdivided case libraries, and has better
international coverage -- the general usage principle is the same:
either system allows you to run Boolean keyword searches across a
variety of federal and state law databases.
Each service has recently added a "natural language" interface --
"WIN" on Westlaw, "Freestyle" on Lexis -- to take the mystery out of
framing a proper search query. While these search methods have some
advantages over pure Boolean searches -- for example, weighting the
documents in the "hit" list on the basis of [in]frequency of usage of
key search terms -- they are usually not a substitute for a rigorous
Boolean search. As a quick way to locate a few relevant cases on a
given topic, however, they are quite helpful.
Both services are extremely expensive, and require the
establishment of an account prior to use, unless you're fortunate
enough to have access through a university library. The cost is
prohibitive for most individuals; those who already have access can
consult their librarians or the provider itself.
One noteworthy feature of these services is that they make
available many more opinions than appear in the printed case
reporters. In addition, both services provide a function which
tells you whether a particular case is still good law. This
function -- AutoCite (Lexis) or InstaCite (Westlaw) -- lists any
subsequent case history (e.g., later appeals), as well as any other
case which overrules it or questions its reasoning. This is more
selective than Shepard's, which lists *all* other cases citing your
case; at the same time, it is broader because it lists any court
decision overruling your case, regardless of whether your case is
specifically mentioned in that later opinion. (A Supreme Court
decision, for example, may overrule scores of lower court cases
without listing them all.)
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