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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. (To find law review articles that are older than
1977, use the hard-copy Index to Legal Periodicals, shelved 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 (LGLIND).
Westlaw —
At the Westlaw welcome screen, enter "LRI"
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 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 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 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 conducting a keyword search, scan
the subject headings employed within particularly relevant article citations,
then plug these terms into a new search using subject headings as displayed
above. You should also feel free to ask a reference librarian for advice.
Key
Word Search:
Simply enter
any key words, e.g.
euthanasia
"trade
dress"
trademark
and "domain name"
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 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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