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Information skills

Law FAQ's : how do I find cases on a topic?

International Programme law students have access to three major legal databases which allow you to search for cases on a particular topic:

• Justis (produced by Justis Publishing)
• Lexis®Library (produced by Butterworths)
• Westlaw (produced by Sweet and Maxwell)

Some cases may be found in only one of these databases, while others may be included in more than one of the databases. The question is, which database should you use?

If you are not familiar with legal databases, it is suggested that you begin by searching all 3 databases. After gaining some experience of performing searches on each of the three databases, you may develop a preference for a particular database.

However, if you wish to be comprehensive in your search, you will usually need to check all three databases, as you may find cases on one database which do not appear on another database. It is also possible to cross search the databases for cases on a topic using JustCite, which then links to the full text in the relevent database. For instance, a search on frustrating event" retrieved 18 cases on Justis, 102 cases on Westlaw and 208 cases on Lexis®Library. We will now look in more detail at searching for cases by topic on each of the three major databases.

Next: Searching for cases by topic on Justis»