Legal Updater September 2002 1
Contents Page 3 The Lexisnexis.co.uk/law, Subscriptions and Legal Updater front pages 4 Contents of the service 5 Navigating the service 6-7 Searching 8 Boolean Searching 9 Help options 2
The Home Page This is the first page you will see when you enter www.lexisnexis.co.uk/law Insert your Username and Password to access your Subscriptions Page To access the Legal Updater click on the Legal Updater option The Legal Updater front page 3
Contents of the service Daily Update A personalised Daily Update sent to your front screen. You can chose from the 68 broad categories (such as Accountancy or Employment) and then 660 sub-categories, so that your front page of the Legal Updater site will be tailored to your requirements. E-Mail Alert Choosing from 68 categories and 660 sub-categories, E-mails will be sent to you at a frequency of your choice; 7am, twice daily or weekly. News and Features News Direct Regional and National Newspapers - Each working day there is a review of all legal stories across almost 60 Regional and National Newspapers. Key stories are summarised with citations to the full article. Article Index - The full text of features covered in over 40 journals. Additionally over 100 Journals are monitored, including their feature coverage, details of relevant cases and legislation and a summary of the feature (a full list of these Journals are included in the site). Case Materials Case Summaries - All England Digest Reports (Next day précis of key cases heard in the High Court) as well as case reports written by the Legal Updater team from The Times and Strand PI Cases. Transcripts - A 7 year archive of Official Transcripts. Legislative Materials Statutes - A 7 year archive of Statutory summaries and Queens Press. Statutory Instruments - A 7 year archive of S.I.s. Is it in Force? - Exact commencement dates and information on all Acts of General Application of England, Wales and Scotland passed since 1975. Bill Tracker - Track the progress of Bills before Westminster in the current session. The service provides summaries of all Government and Private Members Bill and follows them through all parliamentary stages, from first reading to Royal Assent. Quasi-legal Material Legal Press Releases EU Materials European Legal Developments 4
Navigating the service Once you are working within one of the content collections the page you view is divided into three sections: The banners at the top of the screen link you to the Home pages, the Alerts / Preferences / User Guides / Help buttons and the folder tab links to the subscribed services of Lexisnexis.co.uk/law. Contents Tree window to the left the screen. Text window to the right. A Hide Contents button at the bottom of the page will remove the Contents Tree leaving the text page alone. If the text page you are viewing was reached via one of the search options the key words of the search will be highlighted in red, as below for the word Employment. Under the folder tabs is a Scroll Bar giving access to each database of Legal updater and the link New Search to the various search options (see Page 6). 5
Searching There are three main options for searching, each of which can be accessed by clicking on the New Search button 1. The Database Search option Having selected New Search a search box will appear: Type in your search terms, using Boolean Connectors (see page 8) if required. The search will be conducted across the database you are currently working in. 2. The Normal search option Clicking on the Normal search will open the following search option allowing you to choose which database(s) you require to conduct your search in: Database summary results will appear as follows: Choose which database you require and the list of results will appear as follows: 6
3. The Advanced search option Clicking on the Advanced search will open the following search options allowing very specific searching, when details are already known, for the three main databases of: Cases Legislation News & Journals Search results for each Advanced Search appear in the format shown on Page 6. 7
Boolean Searching To refine your searching you can use Boolean Connectors to link together words or phrases. AND / and / & Will find all words listed either side of the connector. 1. abduction and child 2. divorce & maintenance OR / or / Will search for one or all of the listed words. 1. sister or brother or sibling 2. income support benefits NOT / not / ^ Will exclude listed words from the key search criteria. 1. tax not allowance 2. marriage ^ cohabitation XOR / xor / ~ Will search for one of two words but not both. 1. staff xor employee* 2. leave ~ holiday Phrase Searches Surround phrases with. 1. trade union 2. constructive dismissal Wildcards * The Multiple Character wildcard which replaces zero or more characters in a word. 1. oversea* will search for oversea and overseas 2. *ed will search for ALL words ending in ed 3. t*t will search for ALL words beginning and ending in t? The Single Character wildcard which replaces one character, for example cl?rk will search for clerk and clark. $ The Synonym (or Thesaurus) wildcard finds words of the same meaning. For example work$ will find work, toil, effort or trade. % The Word Form (or Stem) wildcard finds forms of the same form of word. For example run% will find run, ran, runs, running. 8
Help Options Online Product Help Button Click on the Help link displayed at the top of every Text page or contact the Butterworths Services Helpdesks For all subscription and technical queries call the Business Support Helpdesk on 0845 608 1188 or E-mail - online.support@lexisnexis.co.uk For all searching and content queries call the Content Support Helpdesk on 0800 00 7777 or E-mail - lne.helpdesk@lexisnexis.co.uk Training If you require Training call the Training Department on 0207 400 4939 or E-mail - training@lexisnexis.co.uk User guide written by: Alan Beesting Business Applications Consultant Training Department 9