Go Right to the Right Source

When you know the most relevant sources for your research, you can stay focused and complete work more quickly and effectively. But of course you can’t know every available source every time. Even your assigning attorney may not know the most pertinent titles for a specific question.

 

How can you make sure you aren’t missing something vital? What easy, cost-effective tools can help you save time and discover the right sources, right away?

 

The Search By Topic feature is a convenient way to find relevant sources quickly and expand your knowledge of legal topics. And now you can easily find the right sources with two more lexis.com® enhancements:

 

 

Now when you go to the Legal tab and select a source within certain practice areas and state jurisdictions, you may see up to 25 recommended sources—ranging from case law and statutes to news and secondary analysis—in addition to your original selection. Recommended sources are based on relevancy, determined by factors such as your navigation and selection.

 

When you choose additional sources, you can run a single, broader, more inclusive search. To help you decide what to include, you can read source details by clicking the “i” information icon next to a source name. And you can view pricing information—transactional warnings or dollar-sign icons appear next to any source title outside your subscription. Select as many additional sources as you need—or proceed with your original source choice.

 

 

The following areas of law/jurisdictions currently bring up Suggested Sources on lexis.com: banking & financial services, California; bankruptcy, New Jersey; patent law, Florida; environment, New York; estates, gifts & trusts, Georgia; insurance, Ohio; taxation, Illinois; trademark law, Pennsylvania; labor & employment, Massachusetts; personal injury, Texas; product liability, Michigan; medical malpractice, Virginia; litigation practice & procedure; real estate; family law; criminal law; construction. Additional areas of law and jurisdictions will be added during the remainder of 2008.

 

 

 

With input and guidance from information professionals, LexisNexis has revamped the Find A Source tab to offer more flexibility in pinpointing lexis.com resources. Now there are two options for finding sources via Find A Source.

 

Just enter your search in the box—there are no buttons to select regarding search style.

 

In addition, the Find A Source tool now looks in a variety of segments within the LexisNexis® online source guide (not just in the source title), so you can enter search terms and possibly find relevant sources that don’t have the search terms in the publication title.

 

For example, if you enter a very broad search such as mental health in Find A Source, you find Mental Health Weekly Digest and Mental Health Business Week, but you also retrieve Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 

Plus the results are ranked by relevance. Each source found is listed once (without source paths). Each search retrieves up to 300 sources.

 

 

Select a letter of the alphabet and scroll through the list to find a source by its title.

 

Within each letter, a pull-down box will be available so you can jump quickly to a portion of the alphabetical listing that contains the title you are looking for.

 

 

 

Using either option, you can easily combine sources directly from your Find A Source results screen. Sources available for combining have white checkboxes next to the titles. Just click the checkboxes for the sources you wish to search and click Combine Sources at the top of the screen.

Now you know multiple ways to quickly find the most relevant sources. Choose the avenue that works for you!