Are you taking summer law classes or doing an internship/externship for credit? Are you wondering why you can't access Lexis or Westlaw? It's most likely because you didn't sign up for summer access with them. If you didn't sign up for summer access, then you'll be limited to 2 hours of use per month during the summer. To sign up for summer access, log in to Lexis and/or Westlaw. Then look for the news item about summer registration and click the link to find out more. Read More ...

Constitution Day and Citizenship Day is Friday, September 17th, commemorating the signing of the Constitution in 1787 Read More ...

Prof. Eugene Volokh at UCLA's law school has posted a blog entry at the Volokh Conspiracy about his discovery of an error in Westlaw's report of a case and his unsuccesful effort to get Westlaw (part of Thomson Reuters) to correct it. While I am sure that this error will eventually be corrected, despite the statements of the customer service representative to whom Prof. Volokh spoke, this does illustrate a larger point about legal research. Read More ...

Continuing and graduating students--you can have your Lexis and Westlaw passwords extended for full use during the summer if you are taking part in a qualifying activity. But, you must register with Lexis and/or Westlaw to have your full access extended. If you don't register, then you will have only very limited access. Here's what Lexis and Westlaw consider to be qualifying activities. Read More ...

One of the best benefits of being a registered law student is unrestricted access to both Lexis and WestLaw. Students often have no idea how much these services cost until they experience a rather rude awakening during their first post-graduation law job. Suddenly, the cost of these services becomes important. Sue Altmeyer, a law librarian at Cleveland State University School of Law has written an excellent introduction on how to search "frugally" using these services. Read More ...

There is some confusion about the Lexis and Westlaw training sessions for the evening 1L students in the part-time program. These sessions are specifically (and only) for the evening 1L students. These training sessions will occur immediately after the evening Contracts class. Evening students do NOT need to sign-up for these sessions (and, in fact, there is no place to do so). Just show up. Read More ...

It's not too late to register for full summer access to Lexis and Westlaw! When you log in to Lexis and Westlaw, you should see a link or a button that will take you to the summer registration pages. If you don't see these, you may need to disable any ad-blocking functions on your internet browser. Read More ...

LexisNexis is allowing free access to Lexis for 2009 graduates who are doing public interest work. This program, LexisNexis ASPIRE, will allow free access to federal and state cases, statutes, regulations, and law reviews. The program has expanded its criteria for eligibility to now include any 2009 graduate who is doing public interest work for a non-profit or charitable organization. Read More ...

Lexis and Westlaw will restrict student access to their systems during the summer (June 1 through July 31). Students may extend their normal Lexis and Westlaw privileges over the summer for certain activities. These activities include an academic purpose (e.g. summer classes, moot court, law journal, faculty research assistant), an unpaid internship/externship that is done for credit, or bar review. Read More ...

Celebrate the anniversary of the United States Constitution Read More ...

We have received two reports of users having problems downloading documents from either WestLaw/Lexis. Much of this may be due to users upgrading to Firefox 3.0 recently. Please remember to add "web2.westlaw.com" and "w3.lexis.com" to the exceptions list in your pop-up blocker. Read More ...

There are some great software tools made by both Lexis and WestLaw for creating table of authorities and writing class outlines. These tools may be particularly useful for first-year law students in their legal research and writing courses. The Lexis application, CaseMap, is also an excellent way to organize facts, people, authorities, and other documents for a case. Read More ...

My esteemed colleagues at the University of San Francisco’s Zief Law Library have an excellent blog, ZiefBrief, and a recent post just alerted me to an important change in LexisNexis content.  Finally, academic law libraries now have access to full-text content of the Wall Street Journal via Lexis Nexis.  For those of you who follow such things, Wall Street Journal content moved from Westlaw to LexisNexis over a year ago, and academic law school subscribers weren’t granted full-text access to WSJ following the move.  However, law librarians across the country begged and pleaded with LexisNexis, and it appears that all of our lobbying has finally paid off.  ZiefBrief has instructions on accessing the Wall Street Journal via LexisNexis here.

Lexis just introduced a new product, Shepard’s BriefCheck, that replaces its old CheckCite software.  According to Lexis, Shepard’s BriefCheck "collects your brief’s case law and law-review citations, verifies them through Shepard’s Citations Service and Auto-Cite and generates a summary report that tags problem cites."  You can also use BriefCheck to check the accuracy of your quotations from case law.  The BriefCheck report notes the errors and supplies the correct language from the case.  BriefCheck is now available to SCU Law students and faculty, and you can find a BriefCheck tutorial here.  To access BriefCheck, sign in to Lexis, click on the Shepard’s tab, then click on the link for BriefCheck at the bottom of the menu.