As you move from law school into the real world of practicing law, it may surprise you to find out what online legal research really costs. During law school it’s easy to use a computer for all your research without any concern about the expense. But in a firm, online legal research must be accounted for as an overhead expense, a recoverable cost that can be billed back to clients, or some combination of the two.
Whether your firm has a subscription that covers all costs, pays for each transaction individually, or pays by the hour, you will need to bill your online time to a specific client to track charges. Partners are sensitive to both over-billing clients and running up a sizable bill for the firm, so they expect you to develop good searching skills.
Your firm made a commitment to LexisNexis because its leaders see the value in online research. They expect you to use LexisNexis® tools, but also be sensitive to the costs and learn to research in ways that are both efficient and cost-effective. The good news is that many LexisNexis features help you search more efficiently while actually improving the quality of your results.
Here are 10 tips that can make your research on the LexisNexis® services at www.lexis.com more efficient and cost-effective.
1. Execute one search across multiple jurisdictions and content types.
Customize your jurisdiction, topic, and content types while searching across expert analysis from Matthew Bender® content, as well as cases, codes, law reviews and more. With one search, you can use the Search by Topic or Headnote feature to access on-point results for your topic and ensure that you are searching across only relevant sources.
- Simplified interface—You can choose single or multiple jurisdictions, multiple sources, and additional search terms to narrow your topic.
- Behind-the-scenes search—A background search ensures that sources appearing on the source selection screen are relevant to your topic. You then have the flexibility of choosing specific sources from the list.
- Clearly defined results—You will see sets of results organized by content type to help you choose which sources to explore further.
2. Move easily between adjoining statute sections.
Use the Book Browse option to view preceding and succeeding code sections of a statute title without running a new search request. This saves you time and the possible cost of a new search.
3. Customize your source selection.
You can create additional tabs at the top of the source selection screen and go directly to sources for specific areas of law or jurisdictions in which you research frequently. Legal, News & Business, Public Records and Find A Source are the standard tabs, but you can add up to 14 additional tabs with just a few clicks of the mouse.
4. Access the results of prior searches at no additional charge.
Your searches and search results save automatically in the History log for 24 hours. You can save time and money by retrieving stored results without having to perform a new search. You can also use the History log to keep a record of your research activity. Just print off a copy of the log when you complete your research session. In addition, your searches (but not results) will be saved in the log for 29 days beyond the initial 24 hours.
5. Narrow your search results at no additional charge.
Save money by using the FOCUS™ feature to narrow your search results at no additional charge without changing your original search request. Think big for your initial search, then use the FOCUS feature to zero in on specific issues. Simply add terms that weren’t part of your original search request to the FOCUS™ Terms box and click Go. You’ll get to the results you want faster without paying for a new search.
6. Retrieve individual documents quickly and cost-effectively.
You can retrieve the full text of a document quickly—with no associated source charge―with the Get a Document feature. Find case law, law review articles, public laws, statutes, treatises, or other analytical materials when you know the required information for that particular document, e.g., citation names of the parties or docket number.
7. Retrieve & print multiple documents at one time.
Save time when working with multiple citations by using the Get & Print feature:
• Retrieve the full text of the case(s).
• Retrieve the Shepard’s® report for the citations.
• Print the results to an attached printer.
• Download the results directly to your computer.
• Open the results in your browser screen.
• Send the results as an e-mail attachment.
You save both time and money by not having to use multiple searches.
8. Gain a quick overview of a case.
Every case you find on the LexisNexis services has several features built in to help you identify the major issues in the case and understand the court’s reasoning in reaching its decision.
• LexisNexis case summaries, available exclusively in LexisNexis case-law documents, consist of Procedural Posture, Overview, and Outcome sections. These concise, targeted synopses of cases, written by trained case-law editors, provide you with a snapshot of a case-law decision—a valuable time-saver as you originally assess cases.
9. Retrieve cases that relate to a specific issue—quickly and easily.
More Like This Headnote allows you to focus on the terms of art or key words in a particular headnote by retrieving cases with LexisNexis headnotes related to that specific headnote. This is particularly useful when you have an on-point case and you want to see quickly if there are other cases that have discussed the same issue. There’s no need for an additional search. Simply click the More Like This Headnote link next to the relevant headnote.
10. Navigate easily through large treatises and other structured documents.
When you are searching in analytical treatises, codes, and other structured materials, you can either run a full-text search or click through a table of contents (TOC). The TOC approach has several features to help you review documents and return to the TOC quickly and easily:
- Search the table of contents or the full text of the document.
- Click + to expand the TOC or click – to collapse it.
- Return to the TOC from the text of a document by clicking the TOC link at the top left next to “View.”
- Jump to a particular TOC level with one of the links that shows your hierarchical path.
- Rest your cursor on a page for more than four seconds, and the cite for the section you’re viewing will display.
Search the table of contents and then view all the sections around your search terms to quickly familiarize yourself with the content.