6.4 CALR: Westlaw, Lexis, Shepard's, KeyCite & Free Sources

Computer-assisted legal research (CALR) is the exam’s name for online research, especially the proprietary platforms Westlaw and Lexis. The Domain 1 cluster still also tests free and less expensive internet sources, Nexis and other non-legal internet used for facts, and manual (hardbound) method. Treat them as one professional workflow with different price tags, not as rival religions. The standard is the same in every medium: find the authority, read it, update it, then write.

Building a query: Terms & Connectors versus natural language

Terms & Connectors (Boolean) searching gives you control. Core connectors, with platform wording that varies slightly:

• AND — both terms must appear
• OR — either term (use for synonyms: attorney OR lawyer OR counsel)
• NOT / AND NOT / Westlaw % — exclude a term
• Quotation marks — exact phrase: “res ipsa loquitur” or “statute of limitations”
• Proximity: /s (same sentence), /p (same paragraph), /n or w/n (within n words: Westlaw /5, Lexis w/5)
• Root expander / wildcard — often ! or ***** (know that they exist and that syntax is vendor-specific)

A constructed example: "statute of limitations" /p (malpractice OR negligence) AND dentist AND NOT criminal. That query looks for a limitations discussion in the same paragraph as malpractice or negligence, requires dentist, and drops criminal cases. Parentheses control order the same way they do in ordinary logic.

Natural language (plain English) lets you type a sentence: “What is the statute of limitations for dental malpractice in Ohio?” The engine ranks documents it thinks are relevant. Natural language is a good start. It is a poor finish when you must know whether a term appeared in the same paragraph as another term, or when you are drowning in false hits. On a PCCE item, the query that uses AND/OR/NOT, a phrase in quotes, and a proximity connector is the Terms & Connectors answer. The query that reads like an email to a colleague is natural language.

Always add filters after the query:

• Jurisdiction and court level (Ohio; Ohio Supreme Court; Sixth Circuit; “this federal district”)
• Date (after the statute was amended; last ten years)
• Reported versus unpublished / nonprecedential
• Practice area or topic when the database offers it

An on-point unpublished opinion may be citable under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 (federal unpublished decisions issued on or after January 1, 2007) and still be the wrong weight to lead a brief. Date filters stop you from building a 1980s memo for a 2024 statute. A jurisdiction filter stops you from handing the attorney a beautiful Alaska case as if it were Ohio law.

Field or segment searches (title, judge, attorney, citation, headnote) tighten a noisy result set. You do not need every field code memorized. You do need to know that “dentist malpractice” dumped into the all-state database with no court and no date is not a finished search.

Shepard’s versus KeyCite as a workflow

Do not memorize every icon color as if the vendors never redesign. Memorize the job.

1. Find a statute or case that appears to answer the issue.
2. Open Shepard’s on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw.
3. Read direct history first: reversed, affirmed, superseded, vacated.
4. Filter citing decisions to your jurisdiction and to the headnote that matches your issue.
5. Open the negative-treatment cases and read them. A yellow signal that is only “distinguished on facts you do not have” may leave your case usable. A red signal on your exact point kills the cite.
6. For statutes, use the citator’s crediting of amending public laws and of cases that hold the section unconstitutional or preempted.

Shepard’s and KeyCite are competing products that perform the same professional function. The exam may use either name. “I already read the case, so I can skip the citator” is always the wrong instinct. Running the citator and ignoring a red flag is the same error as not running it.

Free and low-cost legal internet

High-yield free or low-cost names:

When free is enough: you already have a citation and need the text of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, a Public Law, a CFR part, or a state bill status. When free is not enough: you need reliable negative history, Key Numbers, notes of decision, ALR, Restatements, or a brief-quality secondary source. Sending the attorney a Google Scholar PDF without a citator check is incomplete research. Free sites also miss many unpublished orders and most editorial headnotes.

Law-review and journal databases (HeinOnline, the platforms’ law-review files, some university repositories) are how you retrieve secondary articles the encyclopedias point to. Those articles remain secondary. They do not become mandatory because they are in a paid database.

Nexis and other non-legal internet

Nexis (the news and public-records side of the Lexis universe) and ordinary internet tools are fact-investigation platforms. Use them to find a corporate officer, a news account of an accident, a social-media admission, a Secretary of State filing, or a property record.

They are not legal authority. A newspaper story does not hold. A law-firm blog does not overrule the state supreme court. Wikipedia is a lead, not a cite. On a PCCE item, if the question is “what is the rule,” the answer is not “whatever the client’s website says.” If the question is “where can the paralegal verify that the defendant registered in Delaware last Tuesday,” a non-legal public record is exactly the right tool. Do not run a Nexis news search and call the research “Shepardized.”

Hardbound (manual) research still tested

The blueprint still lists manual (hardbound) legal research as a method. The exam-safe sequence in a print library is:

1. Secondary: encyclopedia, ALR, or treatise index, then the volume, then the pocket part
2. Statute: annotated-code index or popular-name table, bound volume, pocket part, later pamphlet, then session-law advance sheets if the pocket part is stale
3. Cases: digest descriptive-word index, digest volume, pocket part, then the reporter volume
4. Update: print Shepard’s bound volume plus every later supplement and advance sheet

Skipping the pocket part is the print version of skipping KeyCite. Print Shepard’s does not “update itself.” Digest volumes do not include last month’s cases in the hardbound spine. If an item shows a paralegal closing a 2014 C.J.S. volume and citing it as current law, the error is failure to update, not failure to use Westlaw. If the item shows a paralegal reading only the Shepard’s bound volume and ignoring the gold or red paperback supplements, the update is incomplete.

Hybrid practice is normal: find a lead on Google Scholar, read the opinion on a court site, confirm currentness and citing history on paid CALR, and use Nexis only for facts. Cost-consciousness is ethical; stopping at a free PDF because the citator is behind a paywall is not a defense when the case was overruled last month. Tell the attorney when you could retrieve text but could not complete a citator check.

Worked path

The partner wants Ohio dental-malpractice limitations law by 3 p.m. and the firm has Westlaw. Use a natural-language search only to get oriented, then a Terms & Connectors search limited to Ohio and to the years after the current statute took effect. Open the code section in the annotated Ohio code. Read notes of decision. KeyCite the statute and the two best cases. If Westlaw is down, the fallback is the print code plus pocket part, the state digest plus pocket part, and print Shepard’s with supplements — not a news search on Nexis treated as if it were a holding, and not a single un-updated Google Scholar hit.