WestLawNext: Simplified, unified legal research
Jinfo Blog

By Leah Pellegrino

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about Westlaw’s new and improved searching system called WestlawNext. I recently had the opportunity to take this new interface out for a test drive and found myself wishing I had been able to use it during my paralegal studies.

WestlawNext is a new search interface and legal research system launched by Thomson Reuters in February 2010. The system is powered by WestSearch, a new search engine that integrates West’s market research tools such as KeyCite, the West Key Numbering System, ResultsPlus and West’s secondary sources, to compile of list of comprehensive results, with the most relevant documents appearing at the top.

Standout features include relevancy ranking, the ability to add personal notes and organising results into folders for later viewing and sharing with others. Alerts and other useful tools such as a 50 State Survey Builder and Court Wire are also available. Content includes Federal and State statutes, annotated cases, regulations, forms, law journal articles and West’s digests and encyclopedias.

The new screen layout is nicely organised and easy to navigate. That’s a big advantage when you need to find something in a hurry and you want to target your search to a specific kind of content (just court cases in Alabama, for example). For those who have less experience with searching, the new layout is much more user friendly. However, if you are one of those people who is an expert at searching, have no fear. WestlawNext lets you use all of its advanced searching tools as well.

So, in a nutshell, for novice and expert legal researcher alike, WestLawNext allows you to navigate through large amounts of material more easily and efficiently in order to find what you need. The strength of this product is its user friendliness and the ability to pull together primary and secondary sources in one search, which makes for a richer research experience. Having this tool available would have definitely helped me during my paralegal course work. I could have spent less time hunting through a lot of content that wasn’t really what I needed.

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