The Most Well Known Legal Research Resource is LexisNexis
LexisNexis is a corporation providing computer-assisted legal research, government, business and high-tech information sources.as well as business research and risk management services. During the 1970s, LexisNexis pioneered the electronic accessibility of legal and journalistic documents. As of 2006, the company has the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information.
What is LexisNexis used for?
Information can be used for a variety of beneficial purposes. LexisNexis helps uncover the information that commercial organizations, government agencies and nonprofits need to get a complete picture of individuals, businesses and assets with industry-leading data and analytic solutions.
Legal content offerings
LexisNexis services are delivered via two websites that require separate paid subscriptions.
The Lexis database contains current United States statutes and laws and a large volume of published case opinions dating from the 1770s to the present, as well as publicly available unpublished case opinions from 1980 onward. In 2000, Lexis began building a library of briefs and motions.[45] In addition to this, Lexis also has libraries of statutes, case judgments and opinions for jurisdictions such as France, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa and the United Kingdom as well as databases of law review and legal journal articles for countries for which materials are available.
Previously, LexisNexis had a stripped-down free version (known as LexisOne) but this has been discontinued and replaced by Lexis Communities, which provides news and blogs across a variety of legal areas.
Awards and recognition
- In 2010 and 2011 the Human Rights Campaign recognized LexisNexis as a company that treats its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees well.
- Training magazine inducted LexisNexis into its "Training Top 125" list between 2007 and 2010. In 2008 the company was 26th on the list, rising 6 places from the previous year, but in 2009 it was 71st place and by 2010 was 105th.
- In 2012, Nexis won the SIIA CODIE Award for Best Political Information Resource.
A Legal Research Alternative to LexisNexis:
There are plenty of more affordable alternatives for all of your legal research needs. And while none of them provide quite the depth of resources that Lexis does, there are a few completely free databases, and some more expensive but feature-rich sites available. However, you would probably only be able to use those alternatives if you were studying to be a Legal Professional.
However, there is a great Online Legal Research Resource provided by Google called Google Scholar.
For a free database, Google Scholar is surprisingly powerful. It offers full text state and federal case law and statutes, articles, and patents, without any membership required. Use the advanced search option to limit results to specific district or state courts, terms, publications, authors and more. It even includes a tab which shows the context in which the case you’re reading has been previously cited. Google Scholar includes case law over 50 years old and federal options over 80 years, but is missing older case law. It also doesn’t provide keynotes to summarize cases.
Pros:
- Free
- Fully searchable access to state and federal case law and statutes, patents, and scholarly articles.
- Citations within results are hyperlinked to relevant opinions
Cons:
- No way to tell if a case is good law.
- Missing older case law.
- Doesn’t provide keynotes to summarize cases.
scholar.google.com
