Law Library Resources: Westlaw Precision

The new semester brings with it changes to online resources, and not just to the law school website. Westlaw Precision was rolled out to law school users on January 11. When you sign into Westlaw through your law school account, the homepage now features a new Westlaw Precision tab. Though Westlaw Precision incorporates new filters and features, and the interface and some search results look a little different, the underlying content and much of the platform remains the same. You can continue to search the same way or click the “Content” or other tabs to browse and explore resources. New features and tools include:

• Westlaw Precision Research: Available for a select but growing number of areas of law, Precision research filters are intended to assist researchers find legally and factually similar cases.  
• KeyCite Cited With: This new tool within KeyCite lists related cases with a pattern of being cited together even if neither case cites the other, with an option to filter to cases cited within certain proximities such as being in the same string cite.
• KeyCite Overruled in Part: This new red-striped flag identifies cases overruled in part and is intended to help the researcher quickly locate language in the case discussing the overruled point of law. As with the use of any citator signal, it is important to conduct your own analysis.
• Keep List/Hide Details: Use this as another option to save cases of interest, and even hide details of cases you don’t want to review again.
• Graphical View of History: In addition to the traditional view of research history, Precision offers a graphical visualization of the flow of your research process.
• Outline Builder: This tool opens side-by-side with a document within Westlaw, and allows you to drag and drop citations and text snippets into your outline, and to add notes or headings to your outline. When you’re ready, export your outline to Word to integrate into a more complete research outline.

Legal research databases and open resource platforms evolve, as we also saw with the Books UnBound platform in the fall. Please contact a reference librarian if you have questions about Westlaw Precision or research strategies and sources more generally, even as we continue to familiarize ourselves with these new features and tools.