LEXIS.com 

Contents

1. How do I access Lexis.com?
2. How do I find law journal articles?
3. How do I find US and Canadian cases?
4. How do I find US statutes?
5. How do I find UK cases, statutes or journals?

1. How do I access Lexis.com?

Access to Lexis.com is available from the library home page. [http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/]

From the Databases link select "L".

This is the "branding" for Lexis.com. Note that it is also known as LexisNexis Total Research System.

Note that the LexisNexis AU screen (below) looks very similar. For US, Canadian and UK content you need to make sure that you have selected Lexis.com (above) NOT LexisNexis AU (below).

2. How do I find law journal articles?

Lexis.com (unlike most other online full text services) has particular collections of resources grouped together in separate files. Primary legal materials are in separate files to secondary materials and UK materials are separate from US materials. It is necessary to select the collection of resources you wish to search first. Lexis.com refers to this as selecting a Source. The best method is to point and click through the source hierarchy until you reach the source you want. Click on the source name (in blue) to choose and advance through the hierarchy. To get to the collection of US and Canadian law journals, click on the Law Reviews & Journals link, under the Secondary Legal heading.



Clicking on the Law Reviews & Journals link offers the following choices.



To see a description of any source content, click on the information symbol adjacent to the source. This will tell you which journals are included in these collections.

You can navigate to a specific journal title (by selecting Individual Law Reviews & Journals from the right hand column) but if it often faster and more efficient to search in the US & Canadian Law Reviews, Combined file. Click on the title of the file to select that group of law journals to search.



At this point you have selected a source for your research and the search box will appear.

Finding articles on a topic

Always ensure that the Terms and Connectors option is selected. Enter the search terms in the box. If you enter a phrase, LEXIS will search for that exact phrase. Use the words AND and OR to connect search terms.

If your search terms are too general you may get this message. More than 3000 results!

You will need to add extra terms to the search. For example, you may modify the search by adding the word "mental". The new search is mental disability and human rights.

The first 50 citations are presented. You can read the full text of any article by clicking on the title of the article. You can return from the full display to the citation list at any time by selecting the View: Cite option. You can choose to show the keywords by clicking on the Show Hits button.

Use the connectors to construct more precise searches. You will often get too much information, so using the following connectors allow you to reduce the size of the search, and improve the results.

The following search would result in a highly focused set of results. By using the summary command the search terms must appear in the summary/abrstract. This is a good technique if you get too many results.

Finding a specific article

The following steps illustrate how you would find a specific article, if you know the details of the article you require.

To restrict a search to the title field, it is necessary to type the word title and some words from the title. For example, to find the above article, enter the following search: title(human rights of persons with mental disabilities)

HINT: It is not necessary, usually, to enter the full title. You must enter words in the exact order that they are found in the title. You could combine author and title searches. For example: author(gostin) and title(human rights)

How do I find US and Canadian cases?

In the toolbar at the top of the Lexis.com screen, there is a Get a Document button. It is not necessary, for US and Canadian cases, to navigate through the hierarchy of sources to the appropriate source.

Example: The following screen indicate how to find this specific case.

In the Get by Citation box, carefully enter the citation. Leave out full stops, but include spaces. It is not necessary to use upper case. In this case, the citation is 422 so 2d 370

 If the first approach does not work, follow the Citation Formats link for help in constructing the precise format required.

Another approach is to use the Get a Document by Party Name approach.

NOTE: The Get a Document shortcut works only for US and Canadian cases. For UK cases, see the following section.

4. How do I find US statutes?

4.1. Federal Statutes

Lexis.com provides access to the full text of the United States Code Service. This is an annotated version of all federal statutes. To retrieve a statute when you know the statute reference, use the Get a Document button.

Example: The following screens indicate how to find this specific statute.

Click on the Get a Document tab and type 42 uscs 12101 in the open field of the search template.

Many times you may want to view other sections of a statute. A browsing technique, Book Browse, allows you to view a statute section by section.



4.2 State statutes (US)

 The procedure for locating state statutes is the same as for federal statutes. To retrieve a statute when you know the statute reference, use the Get a Document button. To find the Wisconsin Statute section 901.03, click on the Get a Document tab and type wis code 901.03 in the search template.

5. How do I find UK cases, statutes or journals?

Example: The following screens indicate how to find this case.

UK cases are located in a different part of Lexis.com. Click on the United Kingdom link.

Select Case Law, Statutes or Journals depending on the type of material you require.

Select one of the collections.

Enter the case using either the name(caparo industries) or cite(2 ac 605)  approach.