What’s Behind Your Online Legal Research Service?
When you are performing legal research, you don’t always have as much time as you would like to ensure it’s as thorough and accurate as possible. Whether you have minimal time to submit your brief or need quick answers for a client, you need the best solution in order to be as productive as possible.
When resources are scarce, you turn to legal research technology. But how can you be confident that you can trust the quality and reliability of your technology? It all depends upon the quality of the people and processes behind it.
There is more than artificial to Westlaw’s intelligence
Artificial intelligence and automation enable processing and analytical capabilities that make the legal research technology on Westlaw even more powerful. The combination of that powerful technology with humans who have deep legal expertise leads to the best legal research solution available.
Behind Thomson Reuters Westlaw is a group of more than 500 bar-admitted attorneys with the legal expertise to ensure you can complete your research efficiently without sacrificing accuracy. For over 100 years, our attorney-editors have been classifying and connecting the law and adding annotations that provide unmatched legal information to our customers. When Westlaw selects legal experts to become attorney-editors, we look for qualities including a strong legal education and bar admission, extreme attention to detail, and a passion for the law and continued advancement of the legal industry.
Efficiency without sacrificing accuracy
Westlaw attorney-editors know that legal research needs to be thorough, but also efficient. They keep this top of mind when creating editorial enhancements that make it easier for you to find materials relevant to your particular issue. For example:
- Headnotes: Attorney-editors analyze entire cases to craft Headnotes for every major point of law in an opinion. They do more than bring the main legal concepts to the top of each case, they also summarize each issue’s facts, legal principles, and reasonings with how these elements apply to the court’s holdings. Attorney-editors focus on helping you to quickly understand a case’s relevance to your specific issue so that you will know which cases are worth considering and which ones can be ruled out – saving you time.
- Statutes Accuracy: As session laws are passed, attorney-editors are hard at work ensuring you see the most current and accurate version of a statute. Westlaw attorney-editors are experts in their designated jurisdictions. They have relationships within their jurisdictions in order to know the state’s individual publishing rules. If a new session law creates a conflict between multiple statute sections, the attorney-editors then leverage these relationships and their jurisdictional knowledge to publish the correct version. When the law is rapidly changing – even when session laws cause multiple statutes to conflict with each other – you can efficiently find the law you need on Westlaw and feel confident in its accuracy.
Read the full article to learn more about the expertise behind your legal research service – including how Notes of Decisions and the West Key Number System can help you find legal answers faster and more confidently.
BONUS: Check out these related articles for more insights from the experts:
- The meaning of artificial intelligence for legal researchers
- Must See’ Legal Technology to Deliver Better Answers Faster
- Don’t Reinvent the Wheel with Your Legal Research
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About the author:
Mary Schlaphoff is a content writer for Thomson Reuters Westlaw who specializes in thought leadership and branding intelligence. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters in 2016, Mary provided marketing research, strategy, and writing services to small and large clients in industries including technology, healthcare, and financial services. She holds a B.A. in political science from Coe College and an MBA from the University of Washington.
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