Using Westlaw for Topic Selection

Using the "Law Review" tab on Westlaw

Westlaw has set up a tab for commonly used resources law review students for selecting and developing a topic, and doing preemption checking. It is a wise idea to put this tab on your Westlaw homepage. To do this, when you first get onto Westlaw, click on "My Westlaw" in the upper right. You get a list of possible tabs you can insert. Click on "Law Review" under "general tabs." If you click on the words, the tab is inserted automatically - if you click on the check box, you need to click the "Next" button, and then save your changes.

Now at the first screen of Westlaw you see the tab is entered as an option at the top of the page. Click on this tab to go further.

Topical Highlights Databases

The first category of databases on this page is the "Topic selection" database. These databases are made up of annotations to current state and federal caselaw, broken down by broad subject area.

To get into these databases, click on the checkbox next to the name & subject (e.g. Westlaw Topical Highlights Criminal Justice). Then in the search box above, type the word Read and click on Go.

When you do this, Westlaw will automatically construct a search: Read & DA(>1/20/2004) - which will list all recent "hot" cases no more than two weeks old (i.e. which happened AFTER 1/20/2004. You can actually enlarge this search by clicking on "edit" and entering an earlier date). The database lists all current state and federal cases in that topic, broken down by subtopic. You can scroll through the cases from the cite list, or go into the documents themselves. The documents are not full cases; they are summaries of the cases, with a link to the full text. If you're interested in a particular sub-topic or jurisdiction, you can do a "Locate" request - either from the cite list, or from any document - to hone on on the subtopic or jurisdiction. Click on "Locate" (or "Locate in Result") and enter what you're looking for. (NB: A case from Massachusetts will not necessarily say "Massachusetts" anywhere in the summary! You might want to look for court abbreviations, e.g. MASS! Or Mass.App.Ct!)

Westlaw Bulletins

Westlaw bulletins are similar to the topical highlights databases, however they are court specific, and include court news and information as well as caselaw information (notably, the Westlaw Supreme Court Bulletin includes information on cases where cert. has been granted or denied).

There is a link to the Westlaw Supreme Court Bulletin in the "Law Review" tab. To read the most recent bulletin, click on the checkbox next to Westlaw Bulletin - U.S. Supreme Court, type in "read" in the searchbox, and click on "Go." Again, Westlaw constructs a search that allows you to see the most recent supreme court bulletin items issued over the last three weeks (e.g. read & date(>01/06/2004)). You can click on Edit and enlarge this search by typing an earlier date. You can also edit this search to look for other bulletin items. For example, entering the search cert! /4 grant! & da(> 1/06/2004) will pull up items where cert. was granted after January 6th; cert! /4 den! & da(>1/06/2004) will pull up items where cert. was denied after that date.

There are some other Westlaw bulletins to be aware of. One is the basic Westlaw Bulletin, WLB; another is the Massachusetts specific bulletin, WSB-MA. The Westlaw Bulletin includes hot items culled from the Westlaw Topical Highlights database (see above). The state bulletins are similar to the Supreme Court bulletin, however they cover state and federal cases from a single state, rather than for the U.S. Supreme Court.

To get into these databases, enter either WLB or WSB-MA in the "search these databases" box on the left side of the screen (the grey field). All of these databases will construct a LIST search (LIST is identical to the READ search you did above) upon entry into the database. You can always go back and edit the query to be more inclusive, for example, change the LIST & DA(>5/17/2001) to LIST & DA(4/17/2001).

Database searching

Finally, you can go to the federal or state caselaw with an issue, see if it's been litigated, see if there's controversey, etc. The combined federal caselaw database is ALLFEDS, the Massachusetts state cases database is MA-CS, and the Mass. State and Federal is MA-CS-ALL.

Very often when a circuit court disagrees with another, they make mention of that in their own opinion. Therefore, you can search for such splits in the federal courts databases. To search for circuit splits in the federal caselaw databases, try the search: circuit /4 split! disagree! divi!