1. Researching State Statutes

2. Agenda Sample Research Assignment Find relevant statute(s)
By Citation
By Source
Table of Contents
Statute Display
Find Cases Interpreting Statute
- Case Annotations
- Shepard’s®
Managing Your Research Results

3. Research Assignment
TO: Summer Associate FROM: Senior Partner A client has approached our firm about a speeding citation she received last week. The Ohio Highway Patrol officer who pulled her over did not use a radar gun to register her speed. Instead, he visually estimated her speed. She wants to know whether the officer’s actions are permissible before she decides to dispute the citation. Please research whether an officer’s visual estimation of speed is sufficient grounds for the officer to issue a citation in the state of Ohio.

4. Lexis Advance™
This is the initial screen you see when you log into Lexis Advance. Let’s briefly review the main starting page:
-The My Workspace area is a carousel that provides easy access to prior work and support information. For example, you can view the last 15 searches you conducted in History. My Folders includes any folders you’ve created to store documents, You can also set up favorite filters and get access to Customer Service and the Help guide in the Support panel.
-Note the red Search box. You can enter a search here that will search across all content types, all jurisdictions and practice areas.
-Above the red Search box, you have the option to Browse Topics or Browse Sources
-If running a search, you also have the ability to refine your results prior to entering a search, use the pre-search filter tabs in white below the search box. Your options include Content Types, Jurisdiction, and Practice Areas & Topics.

5. Retrieve Statute by Citation
When you know the citation to your statute, you can simply type it in the red search box. One nice feature on Lexis Advance is the Word Wheel. As you start to type in the citation, the Word Wheel suggests a list of Ohio citations. You can select from these citations, saving you time and ensuring you have correctly cited your statute.

6. Retrieving a Statute by Source
By Source: You will not always have the statute citation when answering a legal question and will need to find the applicable law. On Lexis Advance, we can select the Ohio code and search within the Table of Contents to find the relevant sections.
Above the red search box, click on Browse Sources. You have a variety of filtering options to locate your source including: search sources, content type, jurisdiction, or by using the alphabetical index. Let’s filter by Statutes & Legislation, then by Ohio.
On the bottom right, notice the link to the OH – Page’s Ohio Revised Code Annotated. Let’s click on View Table of Contents

7. Ohio Statutes – Table of Contents
Click on View Table of Contents under OH – Page’s Ohio Revised Code Annotated. You are now viewing the table of contents (“TOC”) for the Ohio code. If you know the title you want, you can simply expand the arrows to view the sections within each title. Otherwise, you can search in the TOC. Let’s enter speeding in the search box.

8. Cases Tab – Post Search Filters
Take a look at Title 45, Chapter What section(s) should we consult? Open section

9. Statute Display
-There are several things you want to note when viewing your Statute online, but the first step is to read the statute and locate the relevant section(s). Often, only part of the statute applies to your issue... (Note: Section D addresses exceeding speed limits).
-Note the text at the top of the document that tells you how current the information is.
On the right you have a box entitled About This Document. This is important as it will notify you of any pending or recently enacted legislation that may impact your use or interpretation of the statute. In this case, we see there is “Pending Legislation”. Notice that there is also a link to the Shepard’s report in the About This Document Box. We will explore Shepard’s shortly.
Let’s click on the Pending Legislation link

10. Pending Legislation
Once you click on Pending Legislation, you will see a list of several bills. You can click on each one and scroll down to section D to see what may be impacted based on the proposed changes. In a real world situation, if you determined that a proposed bill will impact your statute if passed, you would monitor the bill so you know if and when it becomes law. Click back to the tab displaying your statute or close this tab.

11. Statute Display
Tools: Several features are available under Tools to manage important language identified in the statute including Copy Text to Clipboard so you can easily paste the text, including the citation into your word document, Save Clip to a Folder to save the important text electronically, and Search Using Selected Text to search for additional documents containing similar text to what you’ve highlighted.

12. Annotations – Case Notes
Case Annotations: After finding the relevant statute and becoming familiar with the law, the next step typically involves reviewing case annotations. Ohio is an annotated code, which means that legal editors have identified key cases that apply or interpret the statute and its subsections. It’s important to note that not every case applying or interpreting the statute is included in the annotations. However, annotations are a great research starting point. They are conveniently indexed by topic so you can locate the more relevant case annotations quickly.
 -Go directly to the case annotations by clicking Case Notes in the convenient Jump To feature, located in the top right corner of your navigation bar. It’s important to view all the topics and identify which ones may have relevant annotations. What topics look relevant to you? (“Officer’s Estimation of Speed” and “Speed Limits – Sufficient and Insufficient Evidence).
-Click the green arrow by Speed Limits, Evidence – Insufficient to get to case annotations under this topic.

13. Annotations – Case Notes
Click the green arrow by Speed Limits, Evidence – Insufficient, note the State v. Freitag case. Further down, under Speed Limits, Evidence - Sufficient, and there is an annotation referencing the City of Barberton v. Jenney case. We will come back to this case and take a look at it shortly.

14. Shepardize® your Statute
Once you’ve finished reviewing any relevant case annotations, you need to Shepardize® the Statute to ensure that you are finding every relevant case. Scroll to the top of the Statute display. How current are the annotations? Remember, Shepard’s is updated every hours and provides every case that has referenced your statute.
Under About this Document, click “View Shepard’s® Report”. Notice the green plus sign. This tells you that “positive treatment is indicated”.

15. Shepard’s® Legislative History
The Shepard’s report is divided into three “categories” represented by tabs at the top of the report.
Legislative History provides the legislative history of your statute. Note you also have a link to the bills impacting this statute under the Pending Legislation alert. This will contain the same information we viewed in the statute display under About this Document.
Citing Decisions lists the cases that have cited to your statute and how they treated your statute.
Citing Law Reviews, Treatises, etc… lists law review articles, treatises, statutes, court documents (briefs, pleading, and motions), restatements and other secondary sources that have cited to your statute.

16. Shepard’s® – Citing Decisions
Click on the Citing Decisions tab. Citing cases are arranged by jurisdiction, starting with the “home” jurisdiction, then highest court to lowest court. Notice the Narrow By filters on the left. These are extremely helpful in providing a breakdown of the report and are customized to the particular report you are viewing. You have the option to filter by Analysis, Court, Terms Within Results, and Timeline. In the Terms Within Results box, type visual estimation

17. Shepard’s® Citing Decisions
The City of Barberton v. Jenney case appears towards the top of your cite list. Notice that you can link directly to the pinpoint page (1049) where this case cites our statute. Click on page 1049.

18. Shepard’s® – Link to cases
We are now on page 1049 viewing the where in the opinion this case is citing the statute. You can continue reviewing either references to the statute or references to the phrase visual estimation using the Terms drop down in your navigation bar.
- Typically, we would click back to the refined list of citing cases and view any relevant cases that were not found in the Case Annotations for the Statute.

19. Managing Search Results
How to effectively and efficiently manage your research results on Lexis Advance

20. Set a Client
Setting a Client: One easy way to organize your searches is to set your client at the beginning of the research process. Therefore, when you are later accessing your search history, you can easily sort by client name.

21. Save a Selection
-Organizing your research is an important part of being an efficient legal researcher, so you can easily get to the relevant research content when writing your legal memo, brief, etc…
You have a variety of options to save relevant content.
-Note at the top left, you have all your delivery options including Save to a folder, Print, Download, documents, or view a printer friendly format.
- Organizing and saving your research electronically is becoming extremely popular. You can create folders using the folder icon in the delivery options. You can create any number of folders and sub-folders to manage your research. Think about how you want to organize your research. For example, you can organize it by issues or by types of authority. . It’s largely a personal preference.
-Saving highlighted text Folders: While you are researching, you want to highlight and keep important text or documents. This is an example of options available for relevant text within a document. After highlighting important text, a green + sign will appear that shows options for selected text. From here you can select Copy text to clipboard, Save clip to folder, or Search using selected text. You can also see these options in your drop down Tools feature in the upper navigation bar.

22. Save a Statute to a Work Folder
-Saving a document to a folder: when you want to save the entire document, click on the folder icon, name your folder or sub-folder, and enter notes so you retain what is most important about the document. Once a document is saved, you can electronically annotate and highlight your saved document.

23. History
Access your History of searches via the My Workspace gray button up top or at the Lexis Advance landing page, History panel. This is the history list view on Lexis Advance that includes all searches for the last 90 days. Notice the filters on the left side of your screen. You can filter by date, type or client.

24. Work Folders
When you want to come back to prior research and saved documents, you can access your Work folders via the My Workspace tab drop down up top or in the Folders Panel on the Lexis Advance landing page. Notice that you can:
-Update the Shepard’s Signal for documents stored in folders so if weeks/months have gone by since you last shepardized the case and you want to cite to this case in a legal document, you can quickly be assured that it’s still good law. Edit notes, etc…

25. Researching State Statutes - Summary
3 STEPs:
Identify the relevant statute(s)
View Cases Annotations interpreting the statute
Shepardize the Statute for validation and to find more authority