Research — “Basic or applied method of
increasing the knowledge by finding new information.”
-Black’s
Law Dictionary
During law school, the research
tools available to you will become your best friends. Honestly, I feel like I used at least one of
them every day during my 1L year and my summer internship. The trio of legal research resources every
law student is exposed to consists of LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg
Law. Everyone has their own favorite,
but it’s good to know how to use all three because most employers only pay for
one.
Overview of the Trio
LexisNexis
So this is actually my favorite of
the resources, probably because you earn points for every time you search and
can redeem them on super awesome stuff, like Kate Spade purses. But on the serious side, they have a ton of
great features, like a litigation suite where you can look up attorneys or
judges interview you with and see what cases they litigated or wrote opinions
for. It also has a great feature where
you Shepardize® the cases you
find. Basically this feature tells you
if that case has been overruled by another case or statute. This is essential to make sure you’re citing
current law, but can also allow you to find cases which cite that particular
case.
Westlaw
Westlaw seems to be the resource
most firms and judges use. It has
similar features to LexisNexis but it has some ones specific to Westlaw. One of the most helpful is called West Key
Numbers. Basically how this works is the
editors at Westlaw distill a case down into a few key points. Then they index those key points into a giant
outline that organizes the points by topic area. If you find an awesome point in a case and
want to find more cases that have that particular point cited, you can click on
the “key” and you’ll find cases with the same points. Westlaw also has a similar feature to Shepard’s but it’s a little different.
Bloomberg
Honestly, this is probably the
resource I know the least about. I
rarely use this for actual legal research, but it operates similarly to the
rest of the resources. There’s one thing
that Bloomberg does better than the other sources, and that is provide
templates for contracts, employee handbooks, and other sample forms. This is great if you have a practical
component of classes like Property or Contracts or for practical writing
courses. Also, you can find documents
from specific course dockets or legislative history that may not be available
elsewhere. That feature is great if you’re
researching a specific case or statute in depth.
Determining Search Parameters
In all of these resources, it helps
to create parameters for your search prior to actually signing in to any of
them. To begin, I would make a list of
the type of source needed, jurisdiction, your broad search term, any narrowing
facts, and any time parameters. This
allows you to search with your broad term and then use the other parameters to
narrow the search within the broad search results. The great thing about this is narrowing a
search and even searching within a search is free so you won’t incur more charges
for work at a firm that pays per search.
Also all of these resources have an option to put documents in folders
so that you can come back to your research later.
Each of these resources has their
strong points and low points, and which you like better can be a matter of
preference. There are also some other
free resources that are available through state bar associations and through
your school. Which one of these legal
resources is your favorite?
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