Legal Research

Westlaw decided to give all legal researchers something to be deeply thankful for this month.  After listening to librarians' pleas for easier access to West Key Numbers on Westlaw for years, West has finally acquiesced, and you can now find a link to West Key Numbers on the main menu at the top of the Westlaw legal research screen.  Here's what it looks like:

When you click on the "Key Numbers" link, you'll pull up a screen that gives you the choice of browsing the West Key Number Digest Online or using a keyword search to find a relevant West Key Number.  If you're not sure which topic and key number you need, browsing the topic outline is a good way to orient yourself to the available topics. In the world outside academia, there's no charge for browsing or searching the key numbers.  However, if you search case law for particular key numbers in a practice setting, that search will cost money.

If you're reading this post and still wondering what the heck a key number is, here is the explanation from West:

Key Numbers help you search for legal concepts [in case law]. The American system of law is broken down into Major Topics -- there are more than 400, including topics like Civil Rights, Negligence, and Pretrial Procedure. Each of those topics is divided, in greater and greater detail, into individual subtopics that represent specific legal concepts. Each specific legal concept has a unique number, called a Key Number. Every case headnote in Westlaw is classified to a particular Key Number, which allows you to find cases on any of the more than 100,000 Key Numbers. The whole outline, along with the case headnotes classified to it, is called the Key Number Digest System.