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Legal Resource Index on Lexis and Westlaw
Contents
This cheat sheet offers an overview of the features of Legal Resource Index 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 (415) 422-6773.
Coverage and Content
On Lexis, Legal Resource Index covers 1977 to the present. On Westlaw,
it covers 1980 to the present. (For periods between 1908 and 1980, use
ILP on the
web (http://www.usfca.edu/library/databases/legalindex.html) or in print.
For periods before 1908, use Index to Legal Periodicals in print
at K 33 .I54 Law Reference).
Legal Resource Index has the same content as LegalTrac. It contains
citations to articles in law journals and other legal periodicals. Westlaw supplements
this citation information with links to the full text of the article if it is
available on Westlaw. Lexis does not offer these full text links.
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Access
Legal Resource Index 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. (LegalTrac,
another version of Legal Resource Index, is available to the entire
USF community at: http://www.usfca.edu/library/databases/legaltrac.html.)
(For more information about Lexis and Westlaw, 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 Legal
Resource Index (Short source name: LEXREF;LGLIND).
Westlaw — At the Westlaw welcome screen, enter "LRI"
in the "Search for a database" 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 the Lexis or Westlaw printers located
in Zief 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 2003
and date bef 1995
and date is 2007
Westlaw — follow these examples to add a restriction:
and da(after 2003)
and da(before 1995)
and da(is 2007)
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Specific Searches Useful for Legal Research or Preemption Checking
Subject Search
Using valid Legal Resource Index subject headings, (e.g., "right to die") follow
these examples:
Lexis:
term("right to die")
Westlaw:
index("right to die")
You can take your best guess as to likely subject headings, or you can use
the method that most librarians use — after running a keyword search, scan
the subject headings used within particularly relevant article citations,
then plug these terms into a new search using the subject heading ("term" or
"index") field, as shown above. For more advice and tips, ask a reference librariane.
Key Word Search:
Simply enter any key words, e.g.
euthanasia
"trade dress"
trademark and "domain name"
sex w/s discrim!
You may use "Boolean" operators (AND, OR, NOT) and "proximity
connectors" (W/N — where N is a number of words), W/S, W/P, etc.).
Because you are searching relatively documents, "AND" is often the most
effective connector. For example, to find articles about students' First
Amendment rights and school dress codes, this search should work well:
"first amendment" AND uniform OR "dress code" AND
school
If you were searching full text law review articles, this search
would retrieve hundreds of articles. Because you're searching a limited amount
of text on LRI, your results will be nicely focused.
Regular plurals are retrieved automatically. Use ! to retrieve all forms
of a word (e.g., discrim!).
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")
Westlaw:
summary(statute w/s "americans with disabilities")
Limiting by Jurisdiction:
Follow these examples to add a jurisdiction limit to your search.
This technique is fairly reliable.
Lexis — add:
and jurisdiction(california)
Westlaw — add:
and summary(jurisdiction w/s california)
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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Go to Finding Law Review Articles
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