Westfield State College Ely Library
Legal Research in Lexis-Nexis Academic : A Basic Guide

This is a guide to using Lexis-Nexis Academic for legal research.  See the general Guide to Lexis-Nexis Academic for specific help in searching for periodical articles. Lexis-Nexis Academic provides access to case law and statutory materials at the federal and state level courts, as well as law reviews and legal news.


Access: At the Ely Library Homepage (http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu) select Quick Links to Databases, then Lexis-Nexis Academic.(If off-campus, you will be prompted for a username and password - enter your WSC email username and password).
Search for Cases
From the default search screen, click the Legal button. At the right, a menu for Legal Searches will appear.
Click the link for Federal & State Cases.
  • Select Terms and Connectors to conduct keyword searches with search commands and functions. (Natural Language allows searching by complete sentences or long phrases).
  • Enter Search terms in the textbox. Use search commands and functions to focus your search. (See table below right).
  • Search within Document Sections allows you to search sections (syllabus, headnotes, etc.) of a case by keyword.
  • The Select Sources dropdown menu allows you to choose a court level to search such as Supreme Court Cases, State Court Cases or topic areas such as Corporate Cases or Family Law Cases.
  • Cases can also be searched by Case Name, Citation, or Judge.
Search Commands:
and
  between terms, requires both terms to appear in the search results. Example: doctor and malpractice
or
  between terms, requires either term to appear in the search results. Example: doctor or physician
w/p
  between terms, requires terms to appear in the same paragraph.
w/s
  between terms, requires terms to appear within the same sentence.
w/n
  between terms, requires a maximum number of words to appear between terms. (w/5, w/10)
!
  at the end of a word, allows an unlimited string of letters to follow. Example: surg! retrieves surgical, surgery
*
  within a word, allows any one letter to appear. Example wom*n retrieves women or woman.

Viewing and Printing Cases, Laws, and Articles

Results are displayed sorted by Relevance or Date. Sorting by Relevance brings the articles
in which the search terms show up the most to the forefront of your results.

Results Groups allows you to view sources by category (by court for cases, by journal for articles).
For articles, switch Results Groups to Sources by Subject to view articles by subtopics.
Results for individual cases and articles will have embedded links to full-text documents including other cases and articles. Cases also include connecting links between Headnotes and cited references in the text.
Search for Codes and Regulations
From the default search screen, click the Legal button. At the right, a menu for Legal Searches will appear. Click the link for Federal & State Codes.


The search screen for Federal and State Codes allows searching of a variety of sources of statutory law including individual titles of the U.S. code, state codes, the Constitution, and the Federal Register. Open the dropdown menu to choose.

Search Secondary Literature
Law Reviews
  • From Search screen, click the Legal button. The default search will be Law Reviews.
  • Select Sources will allow you to select law reviews in topic areas such as Banking Law Review Articles, Family Law Review Articles, etc.
  • Enter Search Terms to search by keyword.
  • Enter the Title and/or Journal to locate the full-text of known law review articles.
  • Specify Years and/or Date to pinpoint publication date.

Legal News

To search Legal News, select the News button from the top toolbar. From the News Search, choose Legal News Group File at the Select Source dropdown menu.

Shepardize Supreme Court Cases
Shepardizing cases displays the prior and subsequent history as well as citing decisions. (Supreme Court cases only) To Shepardize, select Legal from the top toolbar, then Shepard's® Citations from the right-hand toolbar. Enter a case citation and click the Check button .
http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/lexislegal.htm
page maintained by Oliver Zeff , last updated September 12, 2007