A. Introduction

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 136-137

Page 136

The impact of computer technology on the practice of law has been huge. Its impact on legal research has been no less. With computers comes the capacity to store and search a large body of textual information, which has given researchers the ability to locate specific terms within that body of information. There are now a growing number of high quality, easy-to-use commercial databases for conducting online legal research. These subscription databases usually contain one or more of the following features: they have sophisticated search engines that allow a number of different ways of finding information; they contain a variety of law-related information, in most situations including case law, legislation, journal literature, and news; they are available only by subscription for a fee; they are increasingly made available to subscribers via the Internet; and their publishers are constantly making value-added improvements to these databases, including extra content and easier-to-use interfaces.

For law students, your law school has or can likely obtain passwords for you to use some of these databases for academic research. For lawyers and other professionals, the vendors of these online databases will negotiate access to their databases through one of several methods (usually hourly rates, flat-rate fees, or transactional fees, the recovery of which is discussed in Chapter 1, Section C). For members of the public, short-term access to these databases is more difficult, and it may be necessary to instead either hire a lawyer to conduct research

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on these databases on your behalf or conduct your own legal research using other resources discussed in this book.

This chapter will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of conducting legal research using online law-related commercial databases, followed by a brief review of some of the leading services, discussed alphabetically by resource in the following three categories:

· Comprehensive services: » LEXISNEXIS Quicklaw » Westlaw Canada

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