PAU Library offers access to the Nexis Uni, a legal and business database. On the PAU Library webpage, scroll down to Resources, click the Databases dropdown, click on the Database page link, then click on the Nexis Uni dropdown and click on the link for Find Articles in Law and Business using Nexis Uni. That will take you to Nexis Uni.
Note: Nexis Uni through PAU is not the full Lexis that you get through a law school, so it does not include the full range of databases, but it does include the main Lexis case law database as well as the law review, statute, international law, and patent databases, as well as Shephard’s Citation Service.
You can search for court cases, law review articles, or for general magazine articles in the area of general news or business. For general magazine and newspaper articles, either enter keywords in the main search box and choose News under the All Content Types dropdown, or the News / Publication buttons under the Guided Search section.
A good way to start your search if you don’t know which cases are relevant is to go into Nexis Uni, and in the main search box, type your search terms, then click on the All Content Types dropdown, select Legal, then select Law Reviews and Journals to narrow the search to Law Review articles, or for cases select a region under Cases.
To narrow your search to specific court jurisdictions, click on the All Content Types dropdown, select Legal, then select a location under Cases and select the higher federal courts, the 9th circuit, and the state of California if you are interested in California-specific cases. Then click on the search icon.
From here it will show relevant cases and you can switch to Law Reviews and Journals from the left menu if needed.
The default is to order the results by relevance, but you can change the sorting to order the results from newest to oldest in order to see the newest cases or articles.
Alternately, you can select to see the highest courts (U.S. Supreme Court, etc.) at the top, from newest to oldest.
A great way to narrow your results is to search for your key words within the summary of the cases (and remember to use wildcards! The asterisk), which assures that your topic is central to the case. To do this, enter the word summary next to your search term in parentheses, as shown below.
You can narrow or edit the results by selecting the dropdown near the top search bar, or selecting the X under Narrow By, or by entering terms in the box under Search Within Results.
If you click on an individual case, you’ll see the citations for the case (each reporter citation will have asterisks that guide you in the text to see page numbers differentiated for each of the reporters in the text of the case), as well as the outcome or disposition of the case.
You can click on the arrows next to the “All terms” box to skip through the document to your search terms, each of which will be highlighted. Notice that in some cases, the outcome is not as important to you as the detail that mentions your search terms.
You can “Shepardize” the case by clicking on the Shepard’s icon at the top of the document or on the link to “Shepardize this document”, shown in the screenshot below.
“Shepard's® Citation Service” is a research service that allows lawyers to find out if a case is still good law. The process of checking to see if a case is still good law is called “Shephardizing the case”.
Using Shepard's® you will be able to:
Shepardizing with a Citation
On the Lexis Start Page, click on Search by Subject or Topic above the search box, click on Shephard’s Citations under Legal, and then, in the Enter Citation box, type the citation for a case.
Example: 410 us 113
You can narrow or restrict the Shepard’s information by clicking on the items under Narrow By.
There are several possibilities in terms of the status of the case as determined by Shepard’s service.
Generally you’re okay if it does not show a red stop sign or if the yellow warning is not related to your topic or client or the case you are consulting on. But even if Shepard’s gives a Negative Treatment warning, the negative treatment may not be from the 9th circuit (which includes California) or may not be related to your particular use of the case.
