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Researching State Statutes
SOURCE: Lexis Advance™
AGENDA:
1. Sample Assignment
2. Find relevant statute(s)
a. By Citation
b. By Source
c. Table of Contents
d. Statute Display
3. Find Cases Interpreting Statute
a. Case Annotations
b. Shepard’s®
4. Managing Your Research Results
a. History
b. Work Folders
5. Customer Support
1. SAMPLE RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT
TO: SUMMER ASSOCIATE
FROM: Senior Partner
A client has approached our firm about a speeding citation she received last week. The Ohio Highway Patrol officer who pulled her over did not use a radar gun to register her speed. Instead, he visually estimated her speed. She wants to know whether the officer’s actions are permissible before she decides to dispute the citation. Please research whether an officer’s visual estimation of speed is sufficient grounds for the officer to issue a citation in the state of Ohio.
Continued on next page
2. FIND RELEVANT STATUTE(S):
LOG INTO WWW.ADVANCE.
a. By Citation: When you know a statute’s citation, you can simply enter it in the red search box. Let’s enter ORC Ann. 4511.21. Notice that as you start to type in the citation, the Word Wheel suggests a list of Ohio citations. You can select from these citations, saving you time and ensuring you have correctly cited your statute.
TIP: Although you retrieved a single statute, you still have the ability to view the Table of Contents to see if there are related statutes that may be relevant. Click Table of Contents in the top right hand side of the navigation bar.
b. By Source: You will not always have the statute citation when answering a legal question and will need to find the applicable law. On Lexis Advance, we can select the Ohio code and search within the Table of Contents to find the relevant sections.
• Above the red search box, click on Browse Sources. You have a variety of filtering options to locate your source including: search sources, content type, jurisdiction, or by using the alphabetical index. Let’s filter by Statutes & Legislation, then by Ohio.
c. Table of Contents: Click on View Table of Contents under OH – Page’s Ohio Revised Code Annotated. You are now viewing the table of contents (“TOC”) for the Ohio code. If you know the title you want, you can simply expand the arrows to view the sections within each title. Otherwise, you can search in the TOC. Let’s enter speeding in the search box. Take a look at Title 45, Chapter 4511. What section(s) should we consult? Open section 4511.21.
d. Statute Display: There are several things you want to note when viewing your Statute online, but the first step is to read the statute and locate the relevant section(s). Often, only part of the statute applies to your issue... (Note: Section D addresses exceeding speed limits).
• Note the text at the top of the document that tells you how current the information is.
• On the right you have a box entitled About This Document. This is important as it will notify you of any pending or recently enacted legislation that may impact your use or interpretation of the statute. In this case, we see there is “Pending Legislation”. Click on this link. Several bills appear. You can click on each one and scroll down to section D to see what may be impacted based on the proposed changes. In a real world situation, if you determined that a proposed bill will impact your statute if passed, you would monitor the bill so you know if and when it becomes law. Click the tab displaying the Ohio statute. Notice that there is also a link to the Shepard’s report in the About This Document Box. We will explore Shepard’s shortly.
• Tools: Several features are available under Tools to manage important language identified in the statute including Copy Text to Clipboard, Save Clip to a Folder, and Search Using Selected Text.
TIP: This might be a good time to review delivery options (top left) including print, download, email or save to a folder.
3. FIND CASES INTERPRETING THE STATUTE:
a. CASE ANNOTATIONS: AFTER FINDING THE RELEVANT STATUTE AND BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE LAW, THE NEXT STEP TYPICALLY INVOLVES REVIEWING CASE ANNOTATIONS. OHIO IS AN ANNOTATED CODE, WHICH MEANS THAT LEGAL EDITORS HAVE IDENTIFIED KEY CASES THAT APPLY OR INTERPRET THE STATUTE AND ITS SUBSECTIONS. . IT’S IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT NOT EVERY CASE APPLYING OR INTERPRETING THE STATUTE IS INCLUDED IN THE ANNOTATIONS. HOWEVER, ANNOTATIONS ARE A GREAT RESEARCH STARTING POINT. THEY ARE CONVENIENTLY INDEXED BY TOPIC SO YOU CAN LOCATE THE MORE RELEVANT CASE ANNOTATIONS QUICKLY.
• Go directly to the case annotations by clicking Case Notes in the convenient Jump To feature, located in the top right corner of your navigation bar. It’s important to view all the topics and identify which ones may have relevant annotations. What topics look relevant to you? (“Officer’s Estimation of Speed” and “Speed Limits – Sufficient and Insufficient Evidence).
• Click the green arrow by Speed Limits, Evidence – Insufficient, then click on the State v. Freitag case. What is the outcome of this case? Click the green arrow by Speed Limits, Evidence - Sufficient, and then click on the City of Barberton v. Jenney case. What is the outcome of this case?
Click on the tab displaying the Ohio statute.
b. Shepard’s Citation Service:
TIP: Assumes a prior introduction to Shepard’s. See Lesson Plans on “Be Sure Your Cases are Good Law with Shepard’s” and “Find More Authority with Shepard’s”.
• Once you’ve finished reviewing any relevant case annotations, you need to Shepardize® the Statute to ensure that you are finding every relevant case, along with the most recent authority. Scroll to the top of the Statute display. How current are the annotations? Remember, Shepard’s is updated every 24-48 hours and provides every case that has referenced your statute.
• Under About this Document, click “View Shepard’s® Report”. Notice the green plus sign. This tells you that “positive treatment is indicated”.
• The Shepard’s report is divided into three “categories” represented by tabs at the top of the report.
1. Legislative History provides the legislative history of your statute. .
2. Citing Decisions lists the cases that have cited to your statute and how they treated your statute.
3. Citing Law Reviews, Treatises, etc… lists law review articles, treatises, statutes, court documents (briefs, pleading, and motions), restatements and other secondary sources that have cited to your statute.
• Click on the Citing Decisions tab. Citing cases are arranged by jurisdiction, starting with the “home” jurisdiction, then highest court to lowest court. Notice the Narrow By filters on the left. These are extremely helpful in providing a breakdown of the report and are customized to the particular report you are viewing. You have the option to filter by Analysis, Court, Terms Within Results, and Timeline. In the Terms Within Results box, type visual estimation.
• The City of Barberton v. Jenney case appears towards the top of your cite list. Notice that you can link directly to the pinpoint page (1049) where this case cites our statute. Click on page 1049. You can continue reviewing either references to the statute or references to the phrase visual estimation using the Terms drop down in your navigation bar.
TIP: You may want to take some time and review the editorial enhancements in the Barberton case. In particular, the LexisNexis Headnotes outlined in the Case Brief are incredibly helpful. Researchers can go directly to a refined Shepard’s report using the Shepardize – Narrow by this Headnote link (at the end of HN 1).
• Click your Shepard’s report tab to view additional cases in your refined citing decisions list. The Shepard’s report may reveal additional relevant cases that were not found in the Case Annotations for the Statute.
1. Managing your research results
a. HISTORY
• Click on My Workspace at the top right hand side of the screen, and select History, Go to All History.
• To make it easy to track your research activity, History allows you to retrieve your entire search history and to store it for 90 days. It will indicate which results you have saved in a folder by placing a folder icon next to those sources. We’ll do this in a minute.
• Narrow By: You may filter or sort your research based on Date and Type, allowing you to get to your previous results quickly and easily.
• Sort By: You may sort by Date, Client, Type, Title, or Alphabetical.
• Search: You can search across all titles in your history. This is a great way to find all searches you have conducted on a word or phrase.
b. Work Folders
• Create folders using the folder icon in the delivery options, which are located on the left hand side of your screen when viewing a document or cite list. You can create any number of folders and sub-folders to manage your research. Think about how you want to organize your research. For example, you can organize it by issues or by types of authority. It’s largely a personal preference.
o Save a Document to a Folder: Let’s go back to the Barberton case (or any document). In the top left corner of your screen, click the Folder icon. Name your folder and enter notes related to the document for future reference. Click okay.
o Save Text to a Folder: Go back to a document in your results. Scroll down and highlight some text. After highlighting important text, a green + sign will appear that shows options for the selected text. From here you can select “Copy Text to Clipboard”, “Save Clip to Folder”, or “Search Using Selected Text”. You can also find these options under Tools in the navigation bar at the top right hand side of screen.
c. Support:
• LexisNexis® Customer Service – 800-45-LEXIS
• LexisNexis® Account Executive
• Live Chat
d. Summary:
• Identify relevant statute(s)
• Review Legislative alert information if applicable
• Review case annotations
• Shepardize Statute
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