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Index to Legal Periodicals on Lexis & Westlaw
Contents
This cheat sheet
offers an overview of the features of Index to Legal Periodicals
on Lexis and Westlaw.
To learn about features not discussed here, and for help and advice specific
to your research, contact
one of the reference librarians or call the reference desk at (415) 422-6773.
Coverage
and Content
On Westlaw, Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP) begins in August 1981.
On Lexis, ILP coverage begins in 1978. To find citations to article prior to
1978, use Index to Legal Periodicals in print (1770 to present;
K 33 .I54 LAW REFERENCE) or ILP
on the web (1918 to present; http://www.usfca.edu/library/databases/legalindex.html).
ILP contains citations to articles in law journals and other legal periodicals.
When these articles are available on Westlaw, you will see links to the full
text of the articles within some of your search results. Lexis offers full text
links within some ILP search results, but Westlaw generally offers more of these
links.
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Access
ILP on Lexis
and Westlaw is available only to researchers who have individual Lexis and Westlaw
passwords. At USF access is limited to law students, law faculty, and law staff.
(For more information, see Lexis and Westlaw Information.)
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Login
Log on to Lexis
or Westlaw in the usual way.
Lexis — Use "Find a Source" to select the source
Index to Legal Periodicals (Short source name: ILP).
Westlaw —
At the Westlaw welcome screen, enter "ILP"
in the "Search these databases" box on the left-hand side of the screen.
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Search
Options
There are five
main options:
Keyword
Subject
Case Name
Statute Name
Author
You can limit all types of searches by date, by jurisdiction, by the addition
of other terms, or by combining two or more types of searches in one search
request. Examples of each type of search are given below.
Lexis keeps 30
days' worth of searches in the "history." Westlaw stores "trails"
of research sessions for two weeks — or more, if you reset the expiration
date of a "trail."
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Display
of Results
Lexis and Westlaw
both allow displays of citation lists and of the full citations. Lexis also
has a "KWIC" display that shows your search terms in the context of
a brief excerpt of the citation.
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Printing,
Saving, and E-mailing
Lexis and Westlaw both allow: printing to a Lexis or Westlaw printer within
Zief Law Library; printing to an attached printer; emailing results; or downloading
results.
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Limiting
by Date
Lexis —
follow these examples to add a restriction:
and date
aft 2002
and date
bef 1995
and date
is 2005
Westlaw —
follow these examples to add a restriction:
and da(after
2002)
and da(before
1995)
and da(is
2005)
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Specific
Searches Useful for Legal Research or Preemption Checking
Subject
Search
Using a valid
ILP subject heading, follow these examples:
LEXIS:
descriptors("right
to die")
WESTLAW:
index("right
to die")
To find valid ILP subject headings, check any of the recent print volumes
of ILP, or the Index to Legal Periodicals Thesaurus, which is shelved
with the bound ILP volumes.)
Key
Word Search
Simply enter
any key words, e.g.
euthanasia
"trade
dress"
internet
and jurisdiction
sex w/s
discrim!
You may use any of the "Boolean" operators (AND, OR, NOT) and any
of the "proximity connectors" (W/N — where N is a number of
words), W/S, W/P, etc.). Because you are searching a relatively small amount
of text, it's usually effective to stick with using "AND" as your
connector -- for example, if you're looking for articles about students' First
Amendment rights and school dress codes, this search should work quite well:
"first amendment" AND uniform OR "dress code" AND
school
If you were searching a full text database of law review articles, this search
would retrieve hundreds of articles. Because you're searching a limited amount
of text on ILP, your results will be nicely focused.
Regular plurals
are retrieved automatically. Use ! to retrieve all forms of a word (e.g.,
discrim!).
If your keyword
search finds useful citations, you can look for more by viewing any full citation
and using the subject headings (found in the "Index" field on WESTLAW
and the "Descriptor" segment on LEXIS) to create new subject searches
using the format described above.
Author
Search
Follow these
examples, asking to retrieve the author's last name within two words of the
first name.
LEXIS:
author(wildman
w/2 stephanie)
WESTLAW:
author(wildman
w/2 stephanie)
Case
Name Search
Follow these
examples — for when you know one party's name or two parties' names, or
when a party's name is a multi-word phrase:
LEXIS:
case-name(oncale)
case-name(cruzan
and director)
case-name("compassion
in dying")
WESTLAW:
summary(case
w/s oncale)
summary(case
w/s cruzan w/s director)
summary(case
w/s "compassion in dying")
Statute
Name Search
Follow these
examples. (It is useful to add a date restriction when dealing with controversial
laws.)
LEXIS:
statute-name("americans
with disabilities")
or simply enter
the statute name, e.g.: "americans with disabilities"
WESTLAW:
summary(statute
w/s "americans with disabilities")
or simply enter
the statute name, e.g.: "americans with disabilities"
Limiting
by Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
limits on ILP (in any format) are nowhere near as effective as on Legal
Resource Index on LEXIS and WESTLAW and are not recommended.
If you'd like to try a jurisdiction search anyway, just add the name of the
jurisdiction (truncated as needed) to your search, e.g.:
LEXIS:
descriptors("right
to die") and calif!
WESTLAW:
index("right
to die") and calif!
Combining
Types of Searches
You can combine
any and all types of search. For example, you can combine statute name and keyword
searches, as follows:
LEXIS:
statute-name("americans
with disabilities") and alcohol!
WESTLAW:
summary(statute
w/s "americans with disabilities") and alcohol!
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