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CMLawLibraryBlog

The CM Law Library Blog seeks to inform the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law community about key legal education, research, practice, and law library news, with a particular focus on Cuyahoga County and Ohio as well as faculty research interests.

Browser May Negatively Affect LexisNexis Web Site Display

Laura E. Ray, Educational Programming Librarian, laura.ray@law.csuohio.edu | September 28, 2007 - 17:04

If you use an older version of Netscape or another older kind of Web Browser software to access the Web, you may not be able to see everything on all Web sites. Law Library staff have recently noticed this problem with LexisNexis displays. In particular, scroll bars disappear when one attempts to display full documents. LexisNexis is working to resolve this browser-display issue, and we'll notify you via another blog article when this issue is resolved. Until then, we recommend that you use the Internet Explorer browser to access LexisNexis.

Internet Explorer is included with Microsoft software packages, so if you use Microsoft at home, you'll have Internet Explorer. Cleveland-Marshall College of Law faculty can launch Internet Explorer from their office computers by clicking on "Start," then, within the pop-up menus, "Programs," then "Internet Explorer." Cleveland-Marshall College of Law students can launch a restricted version of Internet Explorer from Law Library computer lab workstations by clicking on "Start," then, within the pop-up menus, "Programs," then "IE (Restricted)." This restricted version of Internet Explorer is simply restricted in its access to only LexisNexis and Westlaw services. It is not restricted in functionality or features.

Many Web site designers are involved in the Viewable With Any Browser campaign, advocating for non-browser specific Web sites. The VWAB Web site includes interesting information on Web site design and graphics, as well as sponsors a discussion forum. Browser compatibility is a critical issue in Web site design, highlighting information access and monopoly issues. These issues are well noted by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTTP and HTML. "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network. And once a browser vendor has established such a monopoly, it has an incentive to continue to make arbitrary changes to the defacto standard, forcing potential competitors to play an endless game of catch-up. All the other bright ideas at all the other software companies are stifled because they have to be compatible with a "standard" that changes at one company's whim." Technology Review, vol. 99 (5), July 1996, page 32 et seq.

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Altlaw: Free Searchable Database of Federal Case Law

CM Law Library | September 28, 2007 - 16:41

Columbia University and the University of Colorado recently created AltLaw, a free full-text searchable source for federal appellate and Supreme Court cases. Supreme Court cases go back to 1991 and appellate cases go back 8-15 years, depending on the jurisdiction.

How does Altlaw compare to other free case databases? Altlaw has a more sophisticated search mechanism than Findlaw or LII . Altlaw can sort by relevance and can also search by date and key terms at once. Unlike Findlaw, Altlaw allows for searching some or all of the federal appellate courts at once. LexisOne has sophisticated searching and contains U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1781, but only has federal appellate decisions for the past five years.

The Altlaw site is still in the development phase. Eventually, the site will be updated daily. Older cases may be added in the future, as well as district court cases. Altlaw will add West Reporter citations (S.Ct., F.3d etc.), a unique feature among free case law databases.

Source: Library Laws are Meant to be Broken blog.


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Recent Changes to LexisNexis

Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian, sue.altmeyer@law.csuohio.edu | September 28, 2007 - 13:26

Recent enhancements to LexisNexis include Fifty State Surveys, Cases in Brief, enhanced linking and searchable noise words.

1. Cases in Brief: Starting Jan. 1, 2008, Lexis will no longer contain ALRs. Lexis created Cases in Brief as a substitute. For selected current significant cases, Cases in Brief provides in-depth analysis of the case, subsequent developments and links to secondary sources and news. To look at an example of a Case in Brief, go to LexisNexis® 2006 us dist lexis 43146 Underneath the “disposition” section of this case, you will see a link for a Case in Brief. You may notice a dollar sign by the Case in Brief link, but law school Lexis accounts are not charged for this service. See Julie Webster-Matthews, LexisNexis Case in Brief: A Research Tool for Today and Beyond, LexisNexis Information Professional Update, Sept. 2007.

2. Fifty State Surveys: This new feature is a great time saver when researching the law in all or multiple states. The Fifty State Surveys provide charts of relevant statutes and regulations for each state on various issues. Go to Legal>States Legal-U.S.>Combined States>Find Statutes & Legislative Materials>LexisNexis 50 State Surveys, Legislation & Regulation. You will see a list of topics. There are dollar signs by the topics, but law school Lexis accounts will not be charged.

Another product, called JurisCharts, lists the answers (not just citations) to tax and insurance questions for the fifty states. JurisCharts are available via:


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