Lexis Enhancements

Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian, sue.altmeyer@law.csuohio.edu | September 04, 2008 – 11:35

Recent improvements to Lexis include:

  • LexisWeb is a web search engine, which has indexed over 4,500 legal websites. A nice feature is the list of search filters on the side. For example, a search for “death penalty” will allow you to filter by a generated list of keywords such as “moratorium pending” or “serious flaws”. It is free to all -you do not need a Lexis account to access LexisWeb.
  • Improved Find a Source – Instead of just searching the publication name, Lexis now performs relevancy searches against selected segments of the online Guide. You can do a boolean search or natural language search.
  • Transactional Advisor – After logging in, click on the beige Transactional Advisor tab at the top of the screen. You can search for forms by type of transaction, without having to know which database to select. (Launched Winter 2008)
  • Suggested Content-When you select certain databases, for example, International Court of Justice Decisions, Combined, Lexis will suggest additional databases to search. The suggestions are based upon what sources previous users of that database also used. The idea is similar to Amazon.com’s “Customers who bought this item also bought ….” This feature is currently operational for banking, securities, litigation, intellectual property and labor & employment databases.

Enhancements coming soon ….

  • Document Insights – When you pull up a document, on the left hand side there will be links to: related documents, expert commentary, secondary sources, and profiles of people and companies involved in the case.
  • Quick Search – will search across multiple jurisdictions and practice areas, cutting out the source selection step.