Shepards v. Keycite

Our Lexis rep recently enlightened us on several advantages the Shepards citation service has over Keycite.

1. The depth of treatment stars in Westlaw show how long an opinion talked about a prior case, not necessarily whether the opinion treated the prior case in a strong positive or strong negative way. A “one star” case could briefly say “We follow the decision in State v. Jones” or “We reject the reasoning of State v. Jones“. Shepard’s editorial phrases, assigned by human editors, reflect depth of treatment. For example: very negative treatment
   (ex: overruled ), validity questioned (ex: questioned by), mild negative (ex: criticized), neutral (ex: explained), to the positive (ex: followed by).
2. Shepard’s indicates at a glance whether a case overruled a prior case in part, and followed it in part. Shepard’s will also indicate whether some jurisdictions followed the case and others overruled the case.
3. Shepard’s results are organized by jurisdiction, while one must run a Limit search to locate cases from a particular jurisdiction on Westlaw.

We attempted to incorporate these into points our library’s LexisNexis & Westlaw Features Compared Guide.

For a short discussion of reliability problems with various online citators, see No One Likes Heller (Or Why I’m Having the Citator Blues Again), from the Law Librarian Blog.

Photo by Pfc. Melissa A. Latty, http://www.marines.mil/units/marforcom/iimef/2ndmlg/PublishingImages/080830-7097L-M-003.JPG

Perhaps you can post a summary from the Westlaw rep as to why Keycite is better? I am sure that they have a list of features that they feel make theirs stronger as well.

I have been using both Shepards and Keycite for years, and in my opinion, they are pretty comparable. For years, Westlaw has touted the depth of treatment stars as being a superior feature. Recently, Lexis pointed out that this feature is sometimes not all it is cracked up to be. I put this on the blog because it was news to me. Anyone from Westlaw is welcome to make comments on this blog.

One feature that Westlaw has that Lexis does not is a graphical history of the case. It is helpful particularly in procedurally complex cases.

The Westlaw rep is coming here mid October, so I can ask them for any comments then. I will also email the Westlaw rep, because you asked.