Weslaw in the United States

Weslaw offers legislation, case law and journal articles for North America and United Kingdom. Unfortunatelly, it have limited coverage for some countries like Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

Database content

• Westlaw contains a vast collection of legal sources including legislation and case law, articles, journal indexes, law dictionaries and legal encyclopedias. This page covers information that applies to Westlaw general.
• As mentioned, Westlaw provides in-depth coverage of North American and United Kingdom sources, plus some content from the European Union, Middle East and Asia. There is limited coverage for Australia and New Zealand.
• The main Westlaw page has selected lists of the databases under collection headings, and a search option on the above allowing users to search up to 10 sources straight from the first screen.
• If you can’t find the publication you want, use the Directory link at the very top centre of any Westlaw page. You can either browse the categories or use the search box on the Directory page.

General Searching with Westlaw

There are two main ways of searching Westlaw. Natural Language and Terms and Connectors. Natural Language does not require any knowledge of search syntax but lacks the ability to control what results you get back. Terms and Connectors searches allow you to be more specific, but you need to use connectors such as AND/OR. You can also limit your search to specific parts of the document such as the title or abstract. You can specify that the terms occurs within a certain number of words of each other or that they occur in the same sentence.

Browsing Legislation

If you know the name of the legislation required, you can browse Westlaw’s Table of Contents.

Articles

Journals in Westlaw are located via:

• the World Journals tab which has the bulk of the most important collections
• WLI international tab and  jurisdictional tabs
• the Directory –   under Legal periodicals and Current awareness

Some tabs such as Westlaw United Kingdom have “Quick Find” search boxes for journal articles.  You can search for individual articles by citation using “Search by Citation”.

Wetlaw Website Review

From the article “Visual Literacy and the Design of Legal Web Sites” (2005), published in the AALL website and authored by Michel G Falkow, Assistant Legal Writing Professor, St. John’s University School of Law, Jamaica, New York:

“The Westlaw (www.westlaw.com) Web interface is uniformly denser than that of LexisNexis, with more text and graphics and less white space, though the complexity is not necessarily any harder to process visually. For example, log-in screens include photographs of people at the top or the left, presumably lawyers or law students. Although obviously not functional images for purposes of research, these visuals are always contained in a space separate from the “welcome” and “what’s new” boxes and are therefore easy to scan past. The screen stays balanced by careful alignments of rectangular boxes, colors (mostly shades of blue, Westlaw’s logo color), and the scale of the text. Balance does not necessarily involve symmetry;  quilibrium is attained by putting equally weighted elements on each side of a visual field’s center of gravity, but weight can be provided by any element—line, shape, density, texture, etc.—and so does not need to be the same on both ends. In other words, a picture is easily balanced by text as long as the characteristics of the images are perceived as being equal in emphasis.

Blue conveys a sense of calm; it reassures and appears neutral. Rectangular shapes and horizontal lines, which Westlaw aggressively favors, are stable yet suggest the possibility of growth along the horizontal axis.

As with the lexis.com home page, the white field in which to type one’s password on westlaw.com is accented and so becomes the focus of the entire page, as subtle outline graphics appear to frame the white space in three dimensions. This is exactly what the majority of researchers want: just show me where to start my online session.

Page for Westlaw’s academic users

Interestingly, the sign-on page for Westlaw’s academic users (lawschool.westlaw.com) is considerably busier than the general sign-on page, intended perhaps to attract law students, a younger audience than that for westlaw.com, mostly practicing lawyers. The page includes not only more colors and boxes of information, but it is also dynamic, with changing text or images similar to the paid Web advertising we have become accustomed to. And which many of us have become perpetually annoyed by.

Motion generally forces an image into the foreground against a fixed background, but most
researchers have trained themselves not to respond because of experience with ad-supported commercial Web sites. Serious researchers register ads as “noise,” which has been defined as “anything added to the signal that is not intended by the information source.” (Randall O. Burch, Effective Web Design and Core Communication Issues: The Missing Components in Web-Based Distance Education, 10 J. EDUC. MULTIMEDIA & HYPERMEDIA 357, 360 (2001). As a faculty member (…), I can personally attest to the noise phenomenon, as I consistently fail to notice information on Westlaw’s law school home page. The result is that I often learn about new
Westlaw developments from electronic discussion list postings by my peers rather than directly from the vendor.

Still, the log-in field is at the top left, where we start our visual scan, so despite the busy screen, the most common user option is still visually well placed. The biggest drawback to this image- and information-dense screen is that on most computers, the additional, advanced “Quick Research” option, which allows one to Find or KeyCite a citation in one step with entering the password, is not fully visible unless the user scrolls down the page.

Visual in LexisNexis and Westlaw

This visual density illustrates another consistent difference between LexisNexis and Westlaw on the Web: where the former tends to minimize screen options and thereby devote more real estate to a single item, such as the retrieved document or the search query box, the latter tends to maximize screen options, thereby decreasing space occupied by the main item and visually demoting its importance relative to those other options, which are readily accessible at all times.

Westlaw’s designers have chosen to provide more visual help to users who want to keep executing more research steps, while LexisNexis’s designers have chosen to provide that help to users who want to interpret what they have found. One approach is not necessarily better than the other, though arguably Westlaw makes research more efficient for more experienced users.

For novice and occasional users, the visual theme on Westlaw probably encourages half and discourages the other half. The solution for confused users can only be to slow down: study each new window and remember what was in the prior ones before taking any action.

Westlaw users may also want, more than LexisNexis users, to take advantage of the “Research Trail” (“History” on LexisNexis), a link that lists all documents viewed and searches executed in an online session, similar to the “history” toolbar icon in a Web browser.

Web Tools

Two major Web tools employed by Westlaw to accomplish the goals of availability and versatility are frames and “viewer” windows, which appear throughout the search system and show that Westlaw, unlike LexisNexis, values complexity and depth over simplicity and flatness. Customization is encouraged.

Westlaw strives to make all choices available at all times and to let the user drive the interaction. Although these values make good sense, Westlaw arguably applies them too often and sacrifices the predictability and reversibility that require simpler designs and more obvious visual cues to lead the user to the next logical step of the research path.

¶38 Most Westlaw screens contain two frames, left and right. Good visual
literacy principles are apparent, as with LexisNexis, in consistent use of the
basic color scheme, with shades of the same hue to place material in the foreground
or background; utilization of square and horizontal boxes; and in use of
unvarying typographical attributes, such as black text for most content and blue
for hyperlinks and the same font in the same point size for all characters. But
Westlaw is guilty, like LexisNexis, of manipulating its visual design to suggest that the researcher make certain choices that are probably better for Westlaw’s
bottom line than for the average user’s research project. In its placement of
directory options and the direction in which it suggests the user move, Westlaw
also encourages selection of large, expensive collections of materials, such as all
federal or all state cases, rather than the smaller ones more suited to the typical
research question. This is primarily a problem for the novice researcher, though
the occasional user will also feel some frustration at the number of clicks needed
to find the right database in which to conduct a search. Because of the visual
availability of so many options, the system is nevertheless designed to help the
experienced researcher; for example, one may start a search in the left-hand frame
by typing in a database name or document citation. This is typical of user-driven
design, providing versatility to the knowledgeable customer by permitting him or
her to type direct commands rather than continually select menu options.
¶39 Other obstacles exist for the beginning or casual researcher, who is likely
to be confused by the similarity in nomenclature, and thus typographical appearance,
among different features, such as KeyCite, KeySearch, Key Numbers,
KeyCite Alert, and KeyCite Note. Still, the availability of so many screen choices
may be the best design to suit most researchers at all levels of experience. One
noteworthy set of choices, which distinguishes Westlaw from LexisNexis, is on
the search query page, where field possibilities as well as connectors and date
restrictions are visible additions to the search box. Westlaw also presents quite
a different results screen from LexisNexis once a search has been executed.

Westlaw highlights the search terms in yellow, which mimics the way people
manually highlight printed materials with thick felt-tip markers. LexisNexis does
this as well but never on the default results screen. The brightness and purity of
hue is jarring, momentarily distracting one’s perception of the rest of the content,
but this feature probably makes research more efficient than LexisNexis’s default
results, which list “Core Terms” from each document, words that a programmed
analytic has determined are the most important and so are not necessarily one’s
search terms.

¶40 Another major distinction between the systems is the addition in Westlaw
results screens of “ResultsPlus,” additional material displayed on the right-hand
side that Westlaw has found outside of one’s chosen database that relate to one’s
search terms. This clearly is another attempt to keep users online by examining more
materials than they asked for, but it is not an intrusive attempt. The added links, on
the right, enclosed in soft gray boxes, recede into the background, passively suggesting
rather than overtly encouraging selection. Because the design’s emphasis on
the horizontal directs movement so strongly from left to right, ResultsPlus is easily
incorporated into the user’s research path but is also easily ignored, as the user
decides. Again, Westlaw’s design allows more customization, generally an important
value, but one that tends to favor the experienced over the inexperienced user.

¶41 Frames return when the researcher chooses to look at the full text of one
of the items in one of the results lists. Here, the busy quality of Westlaw screens becomes apparent. The left-hand frame has tabs. Both frames have graphical
icons, such as a book, color-coded and accompanied by a text label to indicate
whether the document is a case, statute, treatise, etc., or a logo for a service
within Westlaw, most commonly KeyCite. The choices within the frames can
be staggering, particularly for statutes. Many links open additional windows
which can be viewed while keeping the main window visible in the background
or maximized to supersede the main window. While LexisNexis sometimes
requires too much scrolling because its text is not dense enough, Westlaw can
require too much scrolling because its text is too dense, not within a document
itself, but throughout the screen because of all the options available in frames
and windows around it.

¶42 Westlaw research is thus multidirectional because of its frames and viewer
windows. It is more intricate, spontaneous, active, and random in its visual design
than LexisNexis. Though simple, predictable, and economical on a “micro”
level—an individual portion of a page—it is not so on a “macro” level—the
process of moving through pages in the course of an inquiry. A researcher’s tolerance
for these different attributes depends not only on his or her knowledge of
Westlaw’s features, but on his or her level of sophistication at following complex
visual organization. Thus, the reference librarian, accustomed to both online legal
research and the ever-developing nature of the Web, will appreciate the spontaneous
and intricate nature of Westlaw’s pages, each suited to the material or result
currently in view. But the librarian’s patrons may well prefer the more rigid,
neutral appearance of LexisNexis’s results and document screens, which tend not
to change with the materials. There is one customization feature that may assist
the occasional Westlaw researcher, however: the ability to modify the size of the
frames, which can simplify the visual choices and thus help keep track of the
research path. Narrowing, or even collapsing, the left-hand frame, which contains
most of the display and search options, can keep one’s eye better focused on the
document in the right-hand frame. By manipulating scale, the Westlaw researcher
runs the risk of forgetting where those options are, but on balance gains the advantage
of increased visual unity and thus concentration.

¶43 Paradoxically, Westlaw takes full advantage of the electronic environment
by enabling researchers to move in so many directions, yet constantly reminds
readers that its documents are taken from the print world. In most of the case law
databases, it adds print reporter page breaks for purposes of citation, but instead
of simply indicating “star” pages for different reporters in brackets or in bold, it
disrupts the visual field of text by adding gray text with all the reporter volumes,
pages, and abbreviations, continued to the margins with gray lines. By calling
attention to print-equivalent documents, the electronic one appears fragmented;
the gray bands are perceived under the Gestalt proximity principle as units distinguishable
from the lines of text and make reading the document more difficult.

Another reminder of the print world appears in many case law databases, where
one can choose to view the document as an image of the print West reporter by opening a PDF file (and incurring an additional charge). Also, although judicious
in its use of graphical icons, Westlaw tends to use ones that are paper-based, not
stopping at the conventional use on the Web of file folders and pieces of paper,
but moving on to spiral notebooks (for KeyCite Notes) and the same key symbol
that has been used in West Digest books for more than a hundred years. Westlaw
provides estimates of print page lengths for most materials. Finally, it divides large
documents into parts, so that users cannot seamlessly scroll from the first word to
the last and instead must click on a “next part” link, akin to taking the next physical
volume of a multivolume work off a library shelf.

¶44 The one part of Westlaw that exploits many colors and symbols is
KeyCite. More noticeable than the text they annotate are the green stars, purple
quotation marks, and red and yellow nautical flags. Unlike in LexisNexis, where
an explanation of all symbols appears on each page if one scrolls down to the
bottom, in Westlaw one must click on a help link to discover what these mean,
though as symbols, they are perfectly suited to the meanings they convey.

Users
versed in American culture will know that more stars are better; that green means
go, yellow is a warning, and red means stop; and that quotation marks mean
that somebody’s words have been repeated verbatim, though whose are repeated
where takes knowledge of the KeyCite service. Of course, although more green
stars may suggest, by themselves, that the cases they annotate are “better,” this
begs the question: better in what sense? Again, the icons help the experienced
researcher significantly more than the novice, who will need to click back to the
KeyCite explanation page to confirm that the stars indicate a quantitative measure
of how much the cited case is discussed rather than a qualitative or editorial
assessment.

¶45 While KeyCite’s use of coding is effective for some users, its use of
typographical accents is not effective for anyone. Citing cases are followed by
bolded characters indicating which headnotes in the cited case are the ones being
discussed. If the cited case has a parallel reporter with another set of headnotes,
both are included. The text becomes unnecessarily complex and draws the reader’s
attention to information that is usually less important. More important information,
such as the jurisdiction of the citing case, is hard to pick out from the long, undifferentiated,
plain text of the citation, which includes all parallel reporters. A researcher
must take more time to figure out how much a so-called “negative” case matters in
terms of its authority, either by this painstaking reading process or by customizing
and re-customizing the list using the “limit” function to show different jurisdictions
separately.

Furthermore, that function, the Limit KeyCite Display option, is at
the bottom of the right-hand frame in tiny type and embedded in a gray band, suggesting
its relative lack of importance in comparison to some of the options in the
left-hand frame, such as West Key Numbers, Table of Authorities, and Full-Text
Document, which are in bold and stand out against their pale blue backgrounds,
surrounded by lots of empty space. On such an intricate screen, one’s eye is drawn
to that restful space rather than to the dark band at the bottom, which seems to provide mere ballast to balance the text above. Visually, one must work too hard
to find one of the most useful features in KeyCite research. Might Westlaw want
researchers to use the options that alert their attention more easily? These problems
hinder the process, for all researchers, of evaluating search results.