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Information Professional Update
Issue 7, July 2007

• Spotlight On ... 1) Check the Legislative Impact® of a U.S. Public Law! Here’s How 2) Check Regulatory Impact— by Agency, CFR Section or Date! Here’s How 3) More Legislative Impact Research Tips
• Knowledge Exchange ... Elsevier Full-Text Journals: You Asked … and LexisNexis® Delivered
• FYI Flash ... Delaware Business Law Volumes Include Access to Special Web Site 2) Link from Case Law to LexisNexis® CourtLink® Dockets 3) New White Paper Compiles Resources and Tips for Researching Experts
• Thrifty Searcher ... Reviewing Search Words and the New Search Feedback Link
• Extra! Extra! ... New Topics in LexisNexis® Coffee Break Webinar Series Coming in July
  

Check the Legislative Impact® of a U.S. Public Law! Here’s How:

Later this month, find Legislative Impact on lexis.com on menus whereever you find the United States Code Service and the Code of Federal Regulations. Click Potomac Publishing Company Materials and move directly to the Legislative Impact system. No additional ID or password necessary.

To find the Legislative Impact document for a law, for example, the USA PATRIOT Act:

1.  Click Legislative Impact in the left navigation bar.

2.  Enter key words from the law’s short title, e.g., ENTER:  patriot
You can also find an impact document by entering the U.S. Public Law cite, a bill number or a USC title and/or section number. (Even view amendments to the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Court Rules, House and Senate Rules, D.C. Code or Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Just select the radio button next to your choice, e.g., Public Law.)

3.  Select the law from your results list, e.g., click USA PATRIOT ACT (PL 107-56).

4.  The impact document displays. Browse or select one of three links:

AMENDMENTS TO BILLS FROM THE 110TH CONGRESS

• A summary of amendments by bill number source is the default display.
  (You can also re-sort amendments by Public Law section or by proposed amendment instruction, e.g., insert, strike, re-designate, etc. To re-sort, use the drop-down Group By box.)
  
  
• Click on a bill number to display a table of proposed amendments—including the exact public law sections affected and amending bill sections. For example, to see how §224(1)(C) of H.R. 1692-1H will affect §816(a) of the USA PATRIOT Act, click the HR 1692-1H link.
  Then link to §224(1)(C).

SUBSEQUENT AMENDMENTS TO THIS LAW SINCE ENACTMENT

• A summary of amendments by affecting U.S. Public Law is the default display. Click on a public law number to see a table of affecting provisions. (You can also re-sort amendments by instruction or by your public law’s sections.)

AMENDMENTS THIS LAW MADE TO EXISTING FEDERAL LEGISLATION

• A summary of affected statutes is the default display. Click on a statute link, e.g., Fair Credit Reporting Act, to see more amendment details.

Check Regulatory Impact—by Agency, CFR Section or Date! Here’s How:

As with Legislative Impact, you’ll find Regulatory Impact on lexis.com on menus throughout lexis.com. No additional ID or password is necessary to gain access.

Click Regulatory Impact in the left navigation bar. You can browse by date and agency or CFR Title, or by date alone. For example:

A.    To see activity by a specific agency, e.g., the 2007 activity of the EPA:

1.  Select 2007 under Browse by Agency. Click on E. Choose        Environmental Protection Agency.

2.  Note that EPA Notices, Proposed Rules or Rules are totaled for you. Click on any category to view a table; click Environmental Protection Agency to see every action.

3.   Actions are presented by date. Click a date to expand the table. (Or re-sort by type. Select Type in the Group by drop-down box. Click Go. Select an action to expand the table.)

B.    To see activity by a specific date, e.g., March 30, 2007:

1.  Click 2007 under Browse by Date.

2.  Select a month, e.g., March.

3.  Click March 30, 2007. Get a complete list of U.S. agencies and their actions for that date. Click a specific agency, e.g. Federal Trade Commission, to view a table of action details.

C.    To see changes to a specific CFR section, e.g., 17 CFR 249:

1.  Click 2007 under Browse by CFR Title.

2.  Select Title 17—Commodity and Securities Exchanges.

3.  Then select Part 249.

More Legislative Impact Searching Tips

1. If You Know the Citation, Get a Document
The Get a Document search boxes at the top of the LexisNexis/Potomac Publishing Company screen make it even simpler to get a Legislative Impact document for a public law. For example, if you know the citation to the USA PATRIOT ACT is 107-56, go to the Get a Document search boxes, select Public law/Chapter from the Type drop-down menu, enter 107 and 56 and click SUBMIT.
You can also use the Get a Document boxes to retrieve full-text documents (and any associated Legislative Impact documents) by:

• bill number (House and Senate)
  
• private law/chapter citation
  
• resolution number
  
• statute-at-large citation
  
• United State Code citation

If you request a document with the statute-at-large citation, you move directly to the document PDF.

2. PDFs are Searchable!
Search any statute at large PDF using the standard Adobe® Acrobat® reader search functions. For example, if you’d like to review the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 48 stat. 881, for language regarding margin requirements, go to the PDF using the Get a Document box. Click the Binocular icon in the upper-left corner. Enter margin and click SEARCH.
 
3. Check Recent Laws for Impact
The left navigation bar includes a special link to the most recent bills approved by the president and assigned law numbers by the Office of the Federal Register. Just click Recent Laws to move to the list in reverse chronological order. Select a law to move to the full text or the full text of the enrolled bill.

Elsevier Full-Text Journals: You Asked … and LexisNexis Delivered!

by Carol Barra, LexisNexis Senior Librarian Relations Consultant

When I started working with LexisNexis, I got a frequent request from the librarians with whom I worked: Why aren’t Elsevier publications available to search on lexis.com in full text?” The next sentence was always, “You’re owned by the same company!”

Well I am happy to report that Elsevier full-text journals are being added to lexis.com and are available to search in full text. Plus you get the ability to print the PDF image of the articles. Now there are 200 Elsevier full-text journals available, including 125 journals just added. Within a year, 500 titles will be available for your full-text research.

Why do law librarians care? Elsevier is a world-leading publisher, providing about 25 percent of the world’s scientific, technical and medical journals. Researching these important titles is essential for conducting prior-art searches for patent practitioners, preparing for litigation (reviewing articles written by experts or gaining a better understanding of a technical or scientific principal), and for researching medical malpractice issues. The journals provide invaluable coverage for your patrons who need scholarly articles covering intellectual property, environmental, health and medical issues. And the PDFs are critical for delivering the exact image of the article with the pagination from the journal as well as the images and drawings that are part of these technical articles.

Of course, you can research the Elsevier journals while using the lexis.com search syntax that is familiar to you and your attorneys. These articles also have LexisNexis SmartIndexing Technology™ terms added to help add precision to your searching.

If all of this content and capability was available when I was in a law-firm library, I would have used access to these full-text journal articles for our patent department and for some of the products liability cases requiring access to scientific and medical articles.

I think about how much time, effort and aggravation my attorneys, paralegals, my staff and I could have saved if we could have searched the full text of the scientific, technical and medical journals and had the ability to produce a PDF image immediately. Instead we had to work from abstract sources and guess that the articles might be relevant, based on the abstract. Then we had to send long lists of articles that we thought might be relevant to a university library and ask them to pull, copy and deliver the articles. When the articles arrived—sometimes several days later—perhaps the next day (if we were lucky), our attorneys and paralegals had to review the articles to determine if, in fact, they met their needs.

So much of this can be avoided with Elsevier full-text journals available to us to search full text, using the familiar LexisNexis search syntax, without leaving our desks.

As a law librarian, I am always thrilled when I see the feedback I get from law-librarian colleagues result in the addition of essential research tools. I hope these new additions exceed your expectations.

Special Insert Details All 200 Journals

Get searching tips, details on the new practice-area group sources and a brief content summary of all 200 Elsevier full-text journals now available through lexis.com … with this month’s LexisNexis Information Professional Update.

Delaware Business Law Volumes Include Access to Special Web Site

Corporation Service Company® and LexisNexis have teamed up to bring you the highest-quality compliance and business-entity law publications. And now the CSC® Library of Publications brings you Delaware Laws Governing Business Entities, Volumes 1 and 2.

In this addition, find the latest updates to the Chancery Court Rules, including the “anti-kickback” affidavit provisions now mandatory for class action and derivative suits. Also find more than 80 new case annotations, reflecting key business entity court decisions in both Delaware and foreign jurisdictions, including the full-text opinions in the essential Stone and Trenwick rulings.

Available in print, these volumes offer the most complete collection of Delaware statutes available and allow researchers to:

• Gain access to the most important business entity laws. Find the statutes, rules, forms and opinions you need to transact Delaware business.
  
  
• Pinpoint statutory changes. Use the Table of Sections Affected to find changes quickly. Blackline Amendment Notes after each amended section show additions and deletions.
  
  
• Identify new case annotations. The Table of New Annotations and change bars highlight the most recently added material and help you quickly identify key Delaware cases.
  
  
• Gain insights. Legislative analyses prepared by Delaware business law experts give you valuable insight regarding changes to Delaware business laws.
  
  
• Find information quickly. Save time searching with the expanded index.
  
  
• Pinpoint the fees required to do business in Delaware. Use the Fees and Amounts Payable Summary to locate this information for different entities.
  
  
• Use complete forms. Editable PDF forms are located on the companion Web site.

That’s Right! A New Companion Web Site

With your purchase of Delaware Laws Governing Business Entities, you get online access to Volumes 1 and 2 in a convenient searchable format, plus the full text of all cited cases and related Delaware business entity forms. Find it at http://cscde.lexisnexis.com and tap into:

• advanced research tools and bookmarks for fast searching.
  
• cross-links between business statutes and cases to enhance your research.
  
• convenient “notes windows” where you can record your thoughts while you research.
  
• print, e-mail and export research features.
  
• editable PDFs of key Delaware business entity forms.
  
• draft formation documents for Delaware entities.

Link from Case Law to LexisNexis® CourtLink® Dockets

For years, CourtLink® has provided links from federal district court dockets to the associated case law on lexis.com. Nearly 400,000 CourtLink dockets are linked to the appropriate case law, offering researchers the ability to find related case decisions easily.

Now reciprocal links have been created from case law to all relevant CourtLink dockets. From the top of the case law, simply click View the Full Docket from LexisNexis CourtLink to access the docket.

New White Paper Compiles Resources and Tips for Researching Experts

Expert witnesses are used in a wide range of litigation, and their opinions are often viewed as critical—they can make or break a case. Yet, despite the importance of experts, many researchers do not take the time to utilize the proper resources to find the right ones, to evaluate their credentials, and/or to assess the admissibility of their testimony.

Of course, your patrons can count on your library to do the job right. And now you have a new, free reference resource to add to your arsenal—the new white paper, Finding and Researching Experts and Their Testimony. Available for viewing and downloading via the LexisNexis InfoPro Web Site, this paper is authored collectively by several legal industry experts, including:

• Michael Brennan (Research Analyst,  Miller Canfield, Paddock & Stone)
  
• David Dilenschneider (Director, Industry Relations LexisNexis)
  
• Myles Levin (CEO, Daubert Tracker)
  
• Carole Levitt (President, Internet For Lawyers), and
  
• Jim Robinson, Education Chair for the California State Bar Law Practice and Management and Technology Section and founder of JurisPro Inc.

Get Finding and Researching Experts and Their Testimony at
www.lexisnexis.com/infopro/training/reference/LitigationSvcs/
FindingandResearchingExpertsWhitePaper.pdf

Mealey’s™ Teleconference to Cover Expert Analysis

Watch LexisNexis Information Professional Update for more details on the newest Mealey’s Teleconference on Researching Expert Witnesses. Coming this Fall!

Dear Thrifty Searchers:

Your law librarian colleagues have requested we review several research tips. The first is a research basic worth repeating—what constitutes a search word. The second covers the new search feedback feature that gives you detailed search assistance as
you research.

What’s a Search Word?
A search word is a single character or characters, alphabetical or numerical, with a space on either side. So, to lexis.com, immunopharmacology and a are each considered one search word.

Approximately 100 “noise” words—some articles, pronouns, conjunctions and other little words such as he, the, because, etc.—that used to be ignored by lexis.com are now searchable and are processed as part of your search request in lexis.com 
That means these words will now be counted in your proximity searches.
 
In search words, hyphens, dashes, slashes and parentheses are treated as spaces.

Here are some examples:

Pretrial.................. one searchable word
Pre-trial................. two searchable words
Pre trial ................. two searchable words
Cooperative........... one searchable word
Co-operative......... two searchable words
§705.25................ one searchable word
§ 705.25............... two searchable words
401(k)................... two searchable words
20/20..................... two searchable words

When searching with words or phrases that include hyphens, dashes, slashes or parentheses, you can include these symbols in the search, as shown above. But it’s
not necessary. You can just replace these characters with a space. In other words, lexis.com reads 20 20 the same as it would 20/20.

If you’re not sure how the word will appear—prejudgment or pre-judgment, for example—include both in your search, that is, prejudgment OR pre judgment. That’s always a wise choice, since spellings vary widely among court decisions, media outlets, book publishers, bloggers, etc.

What does the Feedback on Your Search Link offer?
Now when you search in group sources, you may notice a new link on your results screen. The Feedback on your Search link—right next to the Edit Search and Suggest Terms for My Search links—points out which terms are not searchable in certain sources and shows you how segments may vary among sources. (This link is in addition to the automatic search assistance lexis.com triggers when you run your search. The automatic search assistance triggers appropriate help messages when users try to enter incorrect search syntax or make other common errors.)

Here’s an example of how the Feedback on Your Search link works. Let’s say you enter a segment search:

SOURCE:   State Cases – States Within the Federal 6th Circuit
ENTER:      syllabus(tax) AND date aft 2004

Notice the Feedback on your Search link on your results screen. When you click it, you get the following message:

Some document segments you specified were not searchable in all sources

The following segments are not searchable in the listed sources. Unless you use an OR connector between these segments and additional search terms, no search results will be returned from these sources.

SYLLABUS is not searchable in:

• KY - Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals Orders and Judgments
  
• MI Tax Tribunal and Department of Treasury Decisions
  
• TN Department of Revenue Rules, Rulings, and State Board of Equalization Rules
  
• OH Board of Tax Appeals Orders

New Topics in LexisNexis® Coffee Break Webinar Series Coming in July

Blanket Coverage Doesn’t Have to Come at a Premium
How to perform comprehensive Insurance Law research more efficiently and cost-effectively. It covers the basics of insurance law research from coverage and defense to compliance. Consult experts like Miller’s Standard Insurance Policies and Appleman on Insurance, and stay current with Mealey’s Insurance Reports. Learn time-saving tips that will improve your efficiency in coping with the myriad insurance laws and regulations from all 50 states.

Sarbanes-Oxley Got You Down?
Discover top tips to take the pain out of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and other Corporate Law research tasks. Stay on top of Corporate Governance issues; plan formation/reorganization strategy with Business Organizations; track irregularities and unfamiliar or emerging issues with The Wall Street Journal®; monitor potential securities litigation; and use LexisNexis® SmartLinx® Location Reports.

Labor-Saving Tips You Can Employ Right Now
Get more done with less effort in all aspects of your Labor & Employment Law research. Stay current on emerging issues like sexual harassment & discrimination, learn how to find labor arbitration awards, and leverage expert analysis from Larson on Employment Discrimination and cover state labor laws with Labor & Employment Law, both available exclusively from LexisNexis.

Location, Location, Location
Where you get Real Estate Law information is as critical as the information itself.
Access the most reliable information from the sources you trust—fast. Learn how to draft, revise and negotiate forms with Current Legal Forms for Real Estate, satisfy due diligence requirements with LexisNexis SmartLinx Location Reports, and research state, federal and local requirements with the integrated municipal code collection.

A variety of Webinar dates and times are available. To get more details—and to register—go to www.lexisnexis.com/coffee  (Recordings from Webinar sessions are also available for download—on demand and free of charge but without Starbucks Cards.)

LexisNexis™ Information Professional Update

Newsletter editions are also available at
http://www.lexisnexis.com/infopro/current/newsletter

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LexisNexis Information Professional Update is a monthly newsletter (November/December issues combined) for law-firm, law-school, corporate, and government information professionals published by LexisNexis, P.O. Box 933, Dayton, OH 45401-0933.

Managing Editor
Barbara M. Byrd
barbara.byrd@lexisnexis.com

Contributors
Peter Adams, Beverly Burns, Kara Cox,
Jayne Nash, Carol Sandy

Legal Liaison
Shari Townsend

For comments or questions regarding legal
products, contact:

Cindy Spohr, MLS
Senior Director, Librarian Relations Group
cindy.spohr@lexisnexis.com

LexisNexis, lexis.com, Shepard’s, martindale.com and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks, and FOCUS, LexisNexis SmartIndexing Technology, Shepardizing and Shepard’s Signal are trademarks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used under license. SmartLinx is a registered trademark, and PowerInvoice, TotalPatent and atVantage are trademarks of LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. CaseMap, TimeMap, TextMap and CourtLink are registered trademarks of LexisNexis CourtLink, Inc. HotDocs is a registered trademark of Matthew Bender & Company, Inc. Matthew Bender is a registered trademark of Matthew Bender Properties Inc. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2007 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier. All Rights Reserved. LB2007-6 0507

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