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Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary
database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
for
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
s and
legal profession Legal profession is a profession in which legal professionals study, develop and apply law. Usually, there is a requirement for someone choosing a career in law to first obtain a law degree or some other form of legal education. It is difficult to ...
als available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of
case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a l ...
, state and federal
statute A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
s, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews,
treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions."Treat ...
s, legal forms and other information resources. Most legal documents on Westlaw are indexed to the West Key Number System, which is West's master classification system of U.S. law. Westlaw supports
natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
and Boolean searches. Other significant Westlaw features include KeyCite, a citation checking service, which customers use to determine whether cases or statutes are still good law, and a customizable tabbed interface that lets customers bring their most-used resources to the top. Other tabs organize Westlaw content around the specific work needs of litigators, in-house corporate practitioners, and lawyers who specialize in any of over 150 legal topics. Most customers are attorneys or law students, but other individuals can also obtain accounts.


History

Westlaw was created in 1975 by
West Publishing West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West h ...
, a company whose headquarters have been in
Eagan, Minnesota Eagan ( ) is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, Dakota County, Minnesota. It is south of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Saint Paul and lies on the south bank of the Minnesota River, upstream from the confluence with the Mississippi River. Eagan and the ...
, since 1992; West was acquired by the
Thomson Corporation The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...
in 1996. Several of Thomson's law-related businesses outside the United States have their own Westlaw sites, and Westlaw's international content is available online. For instance, Westlaw Canada from Carswell includes the Canadian Abridgment and KeyCite Canada, and Westlaw UK provides information from Sweet & Maxwell and independent law reports, case analysis and case status icons. More recently, Westlaw China was introduced, with laws and regulations, cases, digests, and status icons (similar to KeyCite flags), for the law of the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. Westlaw Ireland (IE) was established in 2002, covering information found in Round Hall publications as well as legislation, books, cases, current awareness and full-text articles from many of the country's notable legal journals. Westlaw is used in over 68 countries. Westlaw is descended from QUIC/LAW, a Canadian computer-assisted legal research project operated by Queen's University from 1968 to 1973. Available via
IEEE Xplore IEEE Xplore digital library is a research database for discovery and access to journal articles, conference proceedings, technical standards, and related materials on computer science, electrical engineering and electronics, and allied fields. It ...
.
The original name stood for "Queen's University Investigation of Computers and Law." It was directed by Hugh Lawford and Richard von Briesen, and the original code was based on an internal IBM text search project called INFORM/360. The IBM code turned out to be incomplete and required substantial modifications. In 1973, the project was commercialized in the form of a new company called QL Systems and a new product name, QL/SEARCH. In 1976, QL Systems licensed the QL/SEARCH software to West Publishing as the original foundation for what would become Westlaw. West's chief competitor in the legal information retrieval market is
LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer informa ...
. (Ironically, Lawford and von Briesen sold what by then was called
QuickLaw LexisNexis Quicklaw is a Canadians, Canadian electronic legal research Bibliographic database, database that catalogues court decisions from all levels, news reports, provincial and federal statutes, journals, and other legal commentary. It also o ...
to LexisNexis in 2002.) Both Westlaw and LexisNexis started in the 1970s as
dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...
services with dedicated terminals. The earliest versions used
acoustic coupler In telecommunications, an acoustic coupler is an interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone. The link is achieved through converting electric signals from the phone line to sound a ...
s or key phones; then smaller terminals with internal
modems A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more ca ...
. Westlaw's terminal was known as WALT, for West Automatic Law Terminal. Around 1989, both started offering programs for personal computers that emulated the terminals, and when
Internet access Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...
became available, an
Internet address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface identi ...
(such as westlaw.com) became an alternative that could be selected within the "Communications Setup" option in the client program, instead of a dial-up number. West's program was known as Westmate. It was based on Borland
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
around 1997, and then changed to a program compiled on a
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
platform that incorporated portions of
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
. This was the first program to incorporate
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
; prior to that, Westmate had "jumps" indicated by triangles instead of " links." Shortly after that, both publishers started developing
web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
interfaces, with Westlaw's being notable for the use of "web dialogs," emulating the piling of open books on a table. Westmate was discontinued on June 30, 2007. West introduced WestlawNext on February 8, 2010. The main advances are that a user can start a search without first selecting a database, which is helpful because WestLaw has over 40,000 databases, and the search screen allows one to click checkboxes to select the jurisdiction and nature of material wanted. A new search algorithm, referred to as WestSearch, claimed to be the world's most advanced legal research engine, executes a federated search across multiple content types. Users can either enter descriptive terms or Boolean connectors and select a jurisdiction. Documents are ranked by relevance. WestlawNext also supports retrieving documents by citation, party name or KeyCite reference. An overview page enables users to see the top results per content type, or to view all results for a particular content type. Filters can also be applied to refine the result list even further. On the results page, users can also see links to related secondary sources relevant to their research. WestlawNext also provides folders for storing portions of the research selected by the user. The classic Westlaw.com platform was retired in August 2015. WestlawNext was renamed "Thomson Reuters Westlaw", effective in February 2016.


Features


KeyCite

KeyCite is a case citator used in United States
legal research Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a prob ...
that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. Verification of citations is necessary, because lawyers must determine whether a case has been reversed, overruled, or modified by a subsequent case before citing it in court. Further, when interpreting a statute it is necessary to examine previous judicial interpretations. The United States judiciary operates under the principle of '' stare decisis'' – a system of legal precedents – to ensure the courts deliver consistent rulings on similar legal issues, regardless of the political or social status of the parties involved. As such, legal professionals must be certain that the legal citations they use to reinforce their arguments are accurate and still "good law." KeyCite leverages Westlaw technologies, West's attorney-authored case law headnotes and the West Key Number System to determine and immediately alert legal professionals that case law they are reviewing has been either overturned, or may have history that deems the precedential value of the opinion invalid. KeyCite was introduced to Westlaw in 1997 and was the first service to seriously challenge
Shepard's Citations ''Shepard's Citations'' is a citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb ''Shepardizing'' (sometimes written lower-case) refers to ...
, on which legal professionals relied for generations. Shepard's had become such a necessary part of legal research, that citation checking is still informally referred to as "Shepardizing." In 2004, KeyCite was the most-used citation checking service in an annual survey of law firm technology use conducted by the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...
.


Associated software and websites

WestCheck is
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
that extracts citations from a word processing document and submits them to KeyCite or to Westlaw for retrieval of full text documents. The software consists of a standalone program and
word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
add-in, either of which may be used, and a web site with the same functionality. West also provides BriefTools, which replaces West CiteLink, and provides citation checking and file retrieval services within a word processing document. Another version only inserts Westlaw links into documents. West CiteAdvisor formats citations and creates a table of authorities. Like WestCheck, it is available online at citeadvisor.westlaw.com, or as software for a word processor. Westlaw CourtExpress allows searching of
court docket A docket in the United States is the official summary of proceedings in a court of law. In the United Kingdom in modern times it is an official document relating to delivery of something, with similar meanings to these two elsewhere. In the late ...
information. Westlaw Watch allows users to manage periodic monitoring of news and other databases for topics of interest. Westlaw WebPlus provides a web search engine with a focus on legal information sites. The Westlaw Litigator website provides access to legal calendaring and other litigation related applications. Westlaw Today curates legal news and email alerts written by attorneys and
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...
reporters.


Key Number System

The West Key Number System is a master classification system of U.S. law, and is claimed to be "the only recognized legal
taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
." The West Key Number System was created by West Publishing Company and can be described as a highly detailed index of over 110,000 legal topics and sub-topics. The index serves as the backbone for legal information published by West, which appears in the company's print publications, and now on
Westlaw Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statu ...
.


The West Education Network (TWEN)

TWEN is Westlaw's online courseware that is specifically tailored for
law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...
s. It is used as an online extension of the classroom. Teachers use it to post syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, class materials and announcements. TWEN is also used for emailing, forum posting, live chats, polling, linking to CALI Lessons and posting/submitting assignments. (In terms of this range of functionality, TWEN is similar to other educational systems such as Blackboard, marketed by
Blackboard Inc. Blackboard Inc. was an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Reston, VA. It was known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. It merged with Anthology in late 2021, with the future name of the combin ...
). Law school professors occasionally use it for their classes, and it is used by librarians and career services offices. Students can also create and manage their own courses for law reviews, journals and any student organization.


Criticism and controversies


Identity theft controversy

In February 2005, after the
ChoicePoint LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a global data and analytics company that provides data and technology services, analytics, predictive insights and fraud prevention for a wide range of industries. It is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia (part of ...
identity theft Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term ''identity theft'' was co ...
incidents became public, U.S. Senator
Charles Schumer Charles Ellis Schumer ( ; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as Senate Majority Leader since January 20, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Schumer is in his fourth Senate term, having held his seat since 1999, and ...
(D-NY) publicized the fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides widely available information such as addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), previous addresses, dates of birth, and other information lawyers use to do
background check A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and oth ...
s on behalf of their clients. While there is no known case of identity theft involving Westlaw, the company responded to the controversy by announcing it had eliminated access to full SSNs for 85 percent of its clients who previously could retrieve this information, mostly lawyers and government agencies.


Legal disputes

In the mid-1980s, Westlaw sued
LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer informa ...
over
copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
. LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature that let users of either research system find the printed page of a case without looking to the actual book, was found to infringe West's copyrights by the
United States District Court for the District of Minnesota The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota (in case citations, D. Minn.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Minnesota. Its two primary courthouses are in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Cases are al ...
. After Lexis' appeals were turned down by the
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (in case citations, 8th Cir.) is a United States federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the following United States district courts: * Eastern District of Arkansas * Western Distr ...
, the company entered into an agreement to pay West $50,000 per year to license West's pagination and text corrections. No other publisher was offered similar terms, and the terms of the agreement were kept secret until they came out during discovery in the ''Matthew Bender / HyperLaw v. West'' lawsuit. In the mid-1990s, Alan Sugarman, who runs HyperLaw, sued West. The District Court in New York and the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory comprises the states of Connecticut, New York and Vermont. The court has appellate juri ...
held that West did not have copyright on the corrections it made on opinions or on the internal pagination.94 Civ. 0589, 1997 WL 266972 (S.D.N.Y. May 19, 1997), affd. 48 U.S.P.Q.2d 1560; 158 F.3d 674 (2nd Circuit, 1998), cert. denied
Second Circuit Decision in HyperLaw v. West
.


See also

* ''
American Jurisprudence ''American Jurisprudence'' (second edition is cited as Am. Jur. 2d) is an encyclopedia of the United States law, published by West. It was originated by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, which was subsequently acquired by the Thomson Corporation. The ...
'' * '' American Law Reports'' * '' Black's Law Dictionary'' * ''
Corpus Juris Secundum ''Corpus Juris Secundum'' (''CJS''; Latin for 'Second Body of the Law')Legal Research and Writing for Paralegals, Published by Wolters Kluwer and written by Deborah E. Bouchoux is an encyclopedia of United States law at the federal and state levels ...
'' *
HeinOnline HeinOnline (HOL) is a commercial internet database service launched in 2000 by William S. Hein & Co., Inc. (WSH Co), a Buffalo, New York publisher specializing in legal materials. The company began in Buffalo, New York, in 1961 and is currently b ...
*
LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer informa ...
*
Quicklaw LexisNexis Quicklaw is a Canadians, Canadian electronic legal research Bibliographic database, database that catalogues court decisions from all levels, news reports, provincial and federal statutes, journals, and other legal commentary. It also o ...
—another major competing database *
Ravel Law Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
*
West American Digest System The West American Digest System is a system of identifying points of law from reported cases and organizing them by topic and key number. The system was developed by West Publishing to organize the entire body of American law. This extensive taxon ...
* Wexis


References


External links

*
Article from Minneapolis News about the history of West Publishing and Westlaw
{{Authority control West (publisher) Thomson Reuters Online law databases Legal research