Legal Research Databases and CD-ROMs
| Author | Ted Tjaden |
| Profession | Faculty of Law and Faculty of Information Sciences University of Toronto |
| Pages | 114-132 |
CHAPTER
6
LEGAL
RESEARCH
DATABASES
AND
CD-ROMS
A.
INTRODUCTION
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 informa-
tion, 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 databases usually contain
one or
more
of the
fol-
lowing
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 cases including case law,
legisla-
tion, journal literature,
and
news; they
are
available only
by
subscrip-
tion
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
pass-
words
for you to use
some
of
these databases
for
academic research.
For
lawyers
and
other professionals,
the
vendors
of
these online data-
bases will negotiate access
to
their databases through
one of
several
methods (usually hourly rates,
flat-rate
fees,
or
transactional
fees,
dis-
cussed below
in
more
detail).
For
members
of the
public, short-term
114
Legal
Research Databases
and
CD-ROMs
115
access
to
these databases
is
more
difficult,
and it may be
necessary
to
instead either hire
a
lawyer
or
other legal researcher
to
conduct
research
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
con-
ducting legal research using online law-related commercial databases,
followed
by a
brief
review
of
some
of the
leading Canadian
and
Amer-
ican services, including those provided
by
Quicklaw, LexisNexis, West-
laweCARSWELL,
CCH
Online, Canada
Law
Book,
Maritime
Law
Book,
and
SOQUIJ.
At the end of
this
chapter will
be a
review
of
law-
related
CD-ROMs,
their advantages
and
disadvantages, search tips
for
searching
CD-ROMs,
and a
list
of
law-related
CD-ROMs.
B.
ADVANTAGES
AND
DISADVANTAGES
OF
ONLINE
COMMERCIAL
DATABASES
There
are a
number
of
fairly
obvious advantages
to
using online law-
related databases
for
legal
research compared
to
using
print
resources:
Current
information:
The
delay that
occurs
in
publishing
law-relat-
ed
material
in
print
or
CD-ROM
is
ordinarily eliminated with online
databases, which
can be
updated instantaneously. Supreme Court
of
Canada
decisions,
for
example,
are now
made available
on
many
databases within
an
hour
of
being released. Rather than publishing
annual
or
monthly cumulative supplements
in
print
for
updates
to
legislation,
commercial
publishers
such
as
Quicklaw, LexisNexis,
and
WestlaweCARSWELL
can
update their legislative databases
very
quickly, providing
the
researcher with current, cumulative versions
of
legislation.
Scope
of
coverage: Publishers
of
online legal databases
are
increas-
ingly broadening
the
scope
of the
databases
by
adding more judg-
ments
and a
wider variety
of
material
to
their databases, including
full-text
legal textbooks (Quicklaw),
full-text
legislation (Quicklaw,
LexisNexis,
WestlaweCARSWELL,
and
Canada
Law
Book),
the
Canadian
Encyclopedic
Digest,
and the
Canadian
Abridgment
(both
WestlaweCARSWELL).
Since most court judgments
in
Canada
are
not
published
in
print, these online databases
can
often
be the
only
convenient source
of
obtaining unreported judgments.
Full-text
searching:
Historically, print law-related material
in
Cana-
da
has not
been well indexed, sometimes making
it
more
difficult
than
it
should
be to
find
relevant material.
Online
legal research,
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