LexisNexis

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• Lexis-Nexis
• Professor Lisa Smith-Butler
• 2007

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What is Lexis?

• Lexis is a computer assisted legal research tool
  that consists of databases.
• It provides access to the full text of
• state and federal cases, statutes and
  regulations
• law reviews and journals
• newspapers and magazines
• business information
• international legal resources
• legal forms.

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Learning Lexis

• Today we will
• log on
• retrieve a case by citation, party name and
  subject (boolean) searching
• display the case in kwik, cite and full formats
• Demonstrate the focus feature
• examine boolean and natural language searching
• examine the Headnotes feature.
• update with Shepards
• print, email or download
• use Alert and History and
• sign off.

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Logging Onto Lexis

• Open your browser to http//www.lexis.com or
  select the Lexis link from the Legal Research
  Databases section of the Law Library Technology
  Centers page.

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• The next screen is the Lexis home page. At the
  top left hand corner, you will notice that you
  have six choices
• Search
• Research Tasks
• Search Advisor
• Get A Document
• Shepards
• Alerts

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Locating a Case by Citation

• You can retrieve a case when you know the
  citation, party name or docket number.
• To retrieve a case by citation, click on
• Get a Document.
• This allows you to retrieve a case by citation,
  party name or docket number.
• Choose citation and key in 524 U.S. 775.

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• With this command, we have located a case by
  citation, i.e. 524 U.S. 775 and retrieved
  Faragher v. City of Boca Raton.
• Suppose we want to see if this case mentions
  hostile work environment anywhere in the text.
  We can use the focus feature located on the upper
  left hand side of the screen and click on it.
  This will retrieve a query box in which we key in
  hostile work environment.

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• As you scroll down the screen, you can see that
  the Focus feature highlights your focus search
  term in yellow.

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Retrieving a Case by Party Name

• Click on Get a Document.
• Highlight the Party Name folder.
• Key in Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad v.
  White.
• Select U.S. Supreme Court under source.
• Scroll down the screen and click on Search.

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• As you can see in the upper left hand corner of
  the screen, you can view the cases listed in
  either Cite, Kwik, Full or Custom formats.
• Cite is simply a list of the cases.
• Kwik display 25 words on either side of the
  search terms (or case name in this instance.) It
  is the equivalent of an abstract.
• Full displays the full text of the document.

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Citation Format
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Kwik Format
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Full Text Format
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Searching by Subject

• If you lack a citation, party name, or docket
  number, you will need to locate your case by
  subject searching. This is similar to using the
  print digests to find the subject.
• Before beginning your search, do the following
• define the issue
• list the keywords and concepts
• select the appropriate database book
• draft the search query and then
• log on.

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• Suppose you need the definition of a hostile
  work environment. A client does not want to pay
  unemployment claims to a former employee that the
  client says quit. The former employee says that
  she did not quit. Rather she says that she was
  constructively discharged because she was forced
  to work in a hostile work environment. Your
  client is in Florida. You think federal law may
  apply.

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• Issue Can a hostile work environment contribute
  to a constructive discharge?
• Keywords constructive discharge hostile work
  environment
• Source 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Decisions
  or District Courts of Florida

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• Click on Search in the upper left hand side of
  the screen.
• Select the Legal Tab.
• Select Cases-US.
• Select All Courts by Circuit.
• Select 11th Circuit.
• Key in your search query, constructive
  discharge hostile work environment.
• Click on Search.
• This retrieves cases with your search terms.

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• Suppose we want fewer cases. We can draft our
  query to retrieve fewer cases by requiring the
  phrase constructive discharge to appear within
  five words of hostile work environment.
• To do this we click on Edit Search.

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• Suppose that we arent comfortable with either
  175 or 58 cases. We want to broaden our search.
• To broaden our search, we will disregard the and
  connector and the within/5 connector. We will
  ask that either term, rather than both terms,
  appear in the document by using the or connector.

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• You have completed three boolean searches.
• Boolean searching allows you to join keywords or
  phrases with and, or, not, w/5.
• You decide whether to use boolean or natural
  language searching when you draft your search
  query.
• In the upper left hand corner of the screen, you
  will see Terms and Connectors or Natural
  Language. Terms and Connectors is boolean
  searching.

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Headnotes

• With its Headnote system, Lexis also assists
  researchers with locating cases.
• If you locate a headnote that matches your issue,
  click on the headnote.
• A search that provides access to a list of
  citations for cases on the same topic will then
  be retrieved.

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Headnotes

• Suppose you decide that Headnote 3,
• Sexual harassment that is so severe or
  pervasive as to alter the conditions of a
  victim's employment and that creates an abusive
  working environment violates Title VII of the
  Civil Rights Act of 1964 of Faragher v. City of
  Boca Raton is applicable to the facts of your
  case.
• Select and click on Headnote 3.
• Expand your search to include all federal cases
  by selecting the combined Federal Courts button.

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Natural Language Searching

• Click on natural language.
• Draft your query in plain English, just as you
  would draft an issue.
• Query Can a hostile work environment contribute
  to a constructive discharge?
• This will then search the database for words, in
  order of probability of occurrence.

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Preferences

• If you want to change your results view,
  pagination display, etc., click on Preferences.
  This will allow you to make changes.

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Printing, Downloading, or Emailing

• You can print your jobs to the Lexis printer,
  located in the printer/copy room, download the
  information to your hard drive, or email it to
  yourself.
• Select and then click on Print, Download, or
  Email. These choices are located in the upper
  right hand corner of the screen.

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Printing
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Downloading
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Emailing
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Get Print

• If you have several citations, you can use the
  Get and Print command to pull all of these
  citations at once rather than keying in each
  citation individually.
• Separate each citation by a semi-colon.
• Remember, this service can only be used when
  Getting Documents by Citation.

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Updating with Shepards

• Shepards allows you to update your cases,
  statutes, and regulations to ascertain if they
  have been overruled, reversed, etc.
• Click on Check a Citation.
• Key in 524 U.S. 775.
• Select Full.
• Click on Search.
• The Shepards analysis for Faragher v. City of
  Boca Raton is then retrieved.
• Click on Show Any Analysis to get every citing
  reference.

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• In addition to a full Shepards, you may limit
  your Shepards analysis by
• analysis
• jurisdiction
• headnotes or
• date.

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Alerts

• If you want to automatically run a search so that
  you are updated on a daily, weekly, or monthly
  basis, you can do so with the Alert feature.
• Choose your library, draft your search query and
  run your search.
• Then select Save as an Alert.

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Live Support

• Questions about your research query?
• Contact Live Support, and you can chat in real
  time, via the internet, with a Lexis
  representative who will provide suggestions as to
  databases or search constructions.
• Simply key in your query in the text chat box.
  It can hold up 240 characters.

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Cant Remember

• If you cannot remember the searches that youve
  run during a session, you can always select
  History in the upper right hand corner of the
  screen.
• It will display your search query, library and
  search results until 200 a.m. the following
  morning.

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Signing Off

• To log off, click on Sign Off on the upper right
  hand corner of the screen.

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Questions

• Contact the Reference Desk via
• phone at 954.262.6201 or
• email at referencedesk_at_nsu.law.nova.edu.