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Using LEXIS at Davis Library
After you log on, select (type in) a library name. To gain access to virtually all legal
materials, select the GENFED library. To do so, type
"GENFED" at the cursor.
Next, one must select a file. If you select the MEGA file, you
will have access to cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of
Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and Supreme and Appellate courts from
all fifty states.
Once you have selected your Library and File, you can begin searching. There are
several means of effective searching:
- To do a general search for a subject, use key words:
FREE SPEECH W/10 NEWSPAPERS
- To look for a particular case, enter NAME (party and party):
NAME (New York Times and Sullivan)
- You may combine these operators. If you know there was a famous
newspaper case in which someone named Sullivan was a party, you could
enter:
NEWSPAPERS and NAME (Sullivan).
When your search is completed, entering ".ci" (do not include the quote marks) will
display a citation list of all the cases located by your search. To view one of these cases, type
its number from the cite list. When the case is pulled up, you may enter ".fu" to see the whole
thing or ".kw" to see the areas adjacent to your search terms. A list of other useful commands
follows:
.ns: New Search command. Start a completely new search
m: Modify. Adds new terms to a completed search. You may Modify many times
to make your search progressively narrower.
( ): Parentheses: Can be used to change the order in which terms are
searched:
(media OR press) AND (slander OR libel) is different from:
media OR (press AND slander) OR libel.
* : The Wild Card: Takes the place of any one character
b*nd : would locate bind, bond, band, or bend
! : The Root Expander: Takes the place of a string of characters
journalis! would find journalist, journalistic, journalism,
etc.
DATE IS day/month/year : Limits your search to items published on a
given date
DATE IS 2/13/1979: Searches for items published on February 13, 1979
DATE IS 1992: Searches for items published during 1992
DATE AFT day/month/year: Limits your search to items published after a
date
DATE AFT 3/2/1995: Search for items published after March 2, 1995
DATE AFT 8/1995: Searches for items published after August 1995
DATE BEF day/month/year: Limits your search to items published before a
date
DATE BEF 6/10/1988: Searches for items published before June 10, 1988
DATE BEF 1990: Searches for items published before 1990
OR: search for any or all of several terms
marketing OR advertising OR public relations: Will retrieve documents
with any of these three terms
AND: search for all of the terms
first amendment AND newspaper AND prior restraint: Will only retrieve
documents with all three of these terms
W/#: searches for items within # words of each other
free W/10 speech: Looks for "free" within 10 words of "speech"
PRE/#: searches for one word no more than # words before the second
Journalists PRE/10 constitution: would find "Journalists revere the
Constitution," but would not find "The Constitution applies to
journalists."
NOT W/#: requires that the first term be at least # words away from the
second.
public NOT W/5 relations: would return documents with word "public,"
but only if "public" does not appear within five of the word
"relations" in those documents.
AND NOT: Excludes all documents that include a term.
Use this connector
last, because it negates all terms after it.
journalism AND NOT broadcasting: looks for documents that contain
"journalism" but not "broadcasting."
What do you do if you get no hits?
If you are finding few or no cases, you may need to broaden your search. Try
replacing some of your AND and W/# commands with the less restrictive OR. Make
use of the root expander (!) to look for more terms;
If this doesn't help, then you may not be using the proper "terms of art."
Consult a legal dictionary, a legal thesaurus, or your textbook in order to generate some
synonyms for your search terms.
What do you do if you get too many hits?
First, narrow your terms by replacing your OR and AND commands with
W/# and PRE/# commands. Consider carefully what issue you are researching
and put in as many relevant search terms as you can think of.
Consider restricting your search by date. If you don't put
restrictions, LEXIS will be pulling your cases from decades or even
centuries of voluminous legal precedent.
What if your search brings up irrelevant cases?
Look for the proper "terms of art" using the methods described above. Try
to find a case using other materials, like LegalTrac or the Media Law Reporter,
and use the information in those resources to guide you in your LEXIS search.
Be as specific as possible in framing your search. Include many search terms and use
the AND NOT operator to exclude any irrelevant items that keep coming up.
LEXIS: Other Sample Search Strategies
For cases in the last five years involving newspapers and copyright,
enter:
newspaper W/20 copyright AND DATE AFT 1990
For cases involving libel and public relations, but not involving
slander, enter:
public relations AND libel AND NOT slander
For cases involving student publications, try:
(publication or news!) W/15 (college or university or school or
student)
For cases involving confidentiality of sources, enter:
confidential! AND source AND (journalist or reporter)
LEXIS: Printing and Downloading
Please check with The Park Library Director about getting a demonstration
of your printing and downloading options before you undertake this
task.
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