Basic Westlaw Training Katherine Jones

What is Westlaw? Westlaw is a vast but easily searchable online database of case law, legislation, legal journals, commentary and EU and international materials. Many of these documents are full text. This makes it an extremely valuable resource which will be essential to your study here.

Accessing the Westlaw Database Go to Click on Current Students to go to the MyUni page. Log in using your Swansea Login and click on iFind. In the iFind search box, type in Westlaw and click on Search. Click on Online and Westlaw On the Westlaw screen type in or choose Swansea University and click Continue.

Finding Case Law on Westlaw Click on Cases at the top of the page. Search for the case using Free Text, Party Names or Citation. To search using Free Text, type in the search term(s) in the Free Text box. This searches through the entire document for the search term. When searching for a phrase enclose it in quotations marks - “air pollution”.

Finding Case Law If there are too many hits, you can limit it to a particular topic or date by clicking on the left hand side of the page. Clicking on the Edit Search link will allow you to amend you previous search. To do a new search click on the New Search link. You can do more complicated searches by using Connectors. To see the list of connectors used by Westlaw click on List of Connectors.

Connectors Connectors are used with search terms to limit or increase the number of search results. All databases use connectors but the symbols or words used may vary between them. The most common connectors are AND, OR and BUT NOT. Connectors must be in capital letters. AND searches for each term separately anywhere within a document. This limits the number of searches as all of the terms must be present. “Air pollution” AND vehicles would find cases with both these phrases.

Connectors “Air pollution” AND Great Britain OR United Kingdom would find records with air pollution and either Great Britain or United Kingdom. This would increase the number of results. “Air pollution” BUT NOT vehicles would find records with the term air pollution but ignore any records with the term vehicles in them. Use this with caution as it may exclude relevant documents from your list of results.

Searching by Party Names Parties means the two sides involved in a case. Parties can be individuals, companies, local government or organisations. The names of the parties are separated by “v”. If one of the parties is the government, it is written as “R”. (R stands for Regina or Rex).

Searching by Party Names Basic rule when searching is Keep it Simple don’t put in anymore information than you need to. Type in one or both names into the Party Names search box. Word of warning – Westlaw will not automatically correct misspellings. If a word is misspelt it will not find the record.

Understanding the List of Results Type in Bocardo SA v Star Energy UK Onshore Ltd. and click on Search. “Where Reported” field is the law series or journal the case has been reported in. “Documents” means the documents which Westlaw has access to. “Official transcript” is the original document which was produced by the court. You can click on the titles in blue to take you to a full text version of that case.

Understanding the List of Results All cases have a Case Analysis which gives an abstract of the case and also has Cases/Legislation Cited/Citing. Cases/Legislation Cited gives access to other documents referred within the case you are looking at. Cases Citing gives access to other cases which cite the case you are looking at.

Traffic Light System for Cases means good (positive) or neutral treatment. The ruling was up held in any subsequent cases. It is a good law. Green means go. means that the case has been given negative treatment and that at least one section of the law has been subsequently overruled. Red means a bad law - don’t use it. means that there is an appeal for this case going through the Court of Appeal, Civil Division or the Supreme Court. Yellow means treat with caution – watch this space. means that the case has received mildly negative or mixed treatment. Again, yellow means treat with caution.

Searching for Journal Articles Click on Journals at the top of the page. Type in search terms in Free Text, Article Title or Author field. When searching for a phrase in the Free Text field, remember to use quotation marks. Try searching for an article called Clean water and muddy causation by Padfield.

Searching for Journal Articles To see the full text version of the article click on Full Text under Documents. Some articles won’t have a full text version but will have a link to the Legal Journals Index Abstract. Type clean water in the Title field and click on Search. There is no Full Text version for some records so click on Legal Journals Index Abstract under Documents. Check iFind Discover to see if we have access to the journal.

Searching for Legislation Legislation includes Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments. Click on Legislation at the top of the page. If you know the title of the Act you can enter the title in the Act/SI title field. Type in Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1971 and click on search. Clicking on Arrangement of Act will bring up the different sections which you can then click on.

Traffic Light System for Legislation means the section(s) are still in force. means the section is not yet in force. means there are amendments pending. means the section has been repealed. To get a pdf version, click on the icon at the right hand side of the page.

Printing, Downloading and ing Documents Cases, journal articles and legislation can be printed, downloaded or ed by opening the document and clicking on the envelope icon at the top of the page. To print a section or sections of the document click on the box next to the section you want to print, download or before clicking on the envelope icon.

Extra Useful Information Online help is available by clicking on Help above the blue toolbar on the search screens in Westlaw. For further help contract the Law Library Team on the Subject Support Page for Law. Powerpoint slides for this session can be found in Blackboard under Law Library Support – How Tos, Tips and Hints Called “How to do basic searches on Westlaw”.