Category: Legal Research

Posts dealing specifically with legal research, for example, legal research instruction sessions and resources and news about legal research tools

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Drop-in WestlawNext Canada Training

Today Allan Akizuki, Regional Training Supervisor & Solutions Specialist with Carswell will demonstrate WestlawNext Canada research techniques in the law library computer classroom. He will offer two drop-in sessions:

12:30 – 1:15: International Content on WestlawNext Canada.

  • Finding Case Law from the UK, US and other jurisdictions
  • Using KeyCite for US judgments and noting up in other jurisdictions
  • Overview of Secondary Sources including American Jurisprudence 2nd, Causes of Action and more

1:30 – 2:30: Understanding billing and cost-recovery with WestlawNext Canada in Law Firms.

  • Understanding Included, Excluded & Blocked Content
  • Identifying Transactions and what triggers them
  • Review of Notional Billing Charges
  • “Cost-Effective” research concepts
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Intersession and Summer Research Help

Congratulations, students, on completing your final term exams.

For continuing students, please note the library’s reduced hours during intersession, and our summer hours:

Intersession Thurs. Apr. 23-Sun. May 3
Mon-Fri 8:30 am to 4:00 pm
Sat-Sun Closed
Summer Mon. May 4 -Mon. July 27
Mon-Fri 8:00-6:00
Sat-Sun 10:00-5:30

And check or bookmark the UVic Libraries’ hours and location page for ongoing details of our hours of operation.

Our intersession and summer research help will be held in-office. Ask at the circulation desk for directions, or contact us for online and in-person help at lawref@uvic.ca, or 250 472-5023. Full contact details are available at our Contact Us page.

And remember, UVic law students, you need not be away from the law library even if you are away from campus during the break. If you find yourself longing for a look at one of our licensed databases, off-campus access is available to you throughout this time, as always. Simply access the libraries’ database list, and enter your netlink ID and password when prompted to do so.

Enjoy your summer and we’ll see you back in September.

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All SCC judgments published since 1876 now online

Did you know the collection of judgments on the SCC website was previously not quite complete? As of April 10, 2015, the gaps are filled.

From the news release of that day:

…all decisions published in the Supreme Court Reports dating back to 1876 are now available on the SCC Judgments website. Over the past 20 years, the SCC and Lexum have been working collaboratively, together with partners such as the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Law Foundation of British Columbia, the Alberta Law Foundation, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique in Quebec, CanLII and others, to fill in gaps in the Supreme Court judgment database.

The free availability of judgments dating back to 1876 on the Web is part of the SCC’s commitment to making case-related information accessible. All of these newly-added SCC decisions can also be found in the CanLII database at www.canlii.org.

See a October 2014 post on Slaw from Daniel Poulin of Lexum for a prelude and some context. (Lexum is a legal information technology company which has long driven the content for the SCC judgments and CanLII.)

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WestlawNext Canada drop in sessions

Allan Akizuki will be here next Wed. Feb 4 in the library’s computer lab to offer three drop in sessions on how to research using WestlawNext Canada.

12:00-12:45 open session 1
12:45-1:30 open session 2
1:45-2:30 faculty session

No need to rsvp, just drop in and enjoy.

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Attn 1Ls: Legal research and citation refreshers

Voyager, CED, Abridgment, Halsbury’s—sound vaguely familiar but could be Dr. Who characters as easily as Canadian legal research tools?

Then try to make it to one of our 30-minute legal research refreshers, presented by Michael Lines of the law library. Citations will also be covered.

All refresher sessions will be in the law library computer lab. Here’s the schedule:

Week 1 (emphasis research materials)
Tues. Jan 20, 12:00 and 12:30
Thurs. Jan 22, 12:00 and 12:30

Week 2 (emphasis citations)
Tues. Jan 27, 12:00 and 12:30
Thurs. Jan 29, 12:00 and 12:30

No preregistration required.

Also keep in mind the library’s legal research and writing guide: https://libguides.uvic.ca/lrw. There you can find a research strategy overview, links to sample research plans and journals, and primary and secondary legal research starting points.

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Lexis-Nexis QuickLaw Open Sessions

Shaun Dell of Lexis-Nexis QuickLaw will present two open training sessions Wednesday Nov. 5, in the law library:

12:00pm – 1:00pm

  • Quicklaw Refresher In this session we will focus on reviewing the Quicklaw interface functionality as well as the various sources available. Special focus will be placed on finding case and legislation sources, as well as orientating your research through Secondary sources. We will cover Noting-up of legislation and case law, as well as discussing a few tips and tricks to speed up your research in the school and office environments.

1:00pm – 1:30pm

  • Quicklaw for Microsoft Office Refresher This session will be a short introduction to this great little research assistance tool, designed to work with Microsoft Office Word and Outlook. This tool is a great way to enhance your research capability through the tools that you will already be using in a school and office environment.
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WestlawNext Canada drop-in sessions

A representative of WestlawNext Canada will present two training sessions today, Wednesday Oct 22, in the law library:

  • 12 noon to 1:00 pm
  • 3:30 to 4:30 pm

All UVic Law users of WestlawNext Canada are welcome to attend. Please drop in to the law library computer lab at either session, no RSVP required.

As WestlawNext Canada features a completely different structure, interface, and search mechanism this year, upper year students in particular are encouraged to attend to receive an overview of the new platform.

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Legal Research Essentials Wed. Sept 17

On Wed. Sept. 17 the Law Library will host Legal Research Essentials, where incoming and returning students can:

  • Get important legal research passwords
  • Learn about print and electronic sources
  • Enter raffles and win prizes
  • Have a coffee and a snack

Drop into the law library between 8:30 and 3:30 to take part.

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Summer Research Help in the Law Library

If you’re a law student registered in summer session or working as a faculty summer research assistant, you might notice the research help desk (reference desk) in the law library is unattended this summer.

Though the desk is quiet, research help remains available.

Students, you’re encouraged to email or phone the usual research help contacts. The librarians receive email and phone messages at those contacts and will respond as quickly as possible, Monday through Friday. You may also make an appointment with a librarian for research help via the staff at the library circulation desk.

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BC legislation now free at BC Laws

QP LegalEze, familiar to the UVic law community as the BC Queen’s Printer’s deep and highly functional subscription service for current and some historical legislative information, is no more. Or, more accurately, it will be by subscription no more.

All of its content and functionality now is being made available through BC Laws, the free site also offered by the Queen’s Printer:

BC Laws has been upgraded to provide enhanced searching and more content including historical legislation and related publications such as BC Gazette, full text Orders-in-Council, and Tables of Legislative Changes. All content is delivered in an “open data format” and restrictions on commercial and non-commercial use of the data have been changed (read more).

This means the UVic Libraries subscription to QP LegalEze will soon disappear, but the content won’t. We’ll be able to access all of it through BC Laws. See the April 2, 2014 BC government news release for details about the transition process.

Some jurisdictions—Ontario and the federal, for example—have offered free and more or less current access to primary law for years, with some depth of historical content and ability to manipulate searches to locate the law at particular points in time. Other jurisdictions, like BC, have offered excellent historical and current legislative content by paid subscription, with a limited range of primary content available on companion free sites. And opening up the data is a great new step.

If freer access to primary law were not a good enough thing, it’s wonderful and exciting that the content on BC Law—all of it—is delivered as open data, under a Queen’s Printer License. The license enables, among other activities, full and partial content reuse and publication for commercial and non-commercial purposes, subject to appropriate conditions. To this end, the Queen’s Printer has also released access to the API underlying BC Laws.