Lexis® Search Advisor Find a Legal Topic Tutorial

Lexis® Search by Topic or Headnote: Find a Legal Topic Tutorial - Textual Version

This tutorial demonstrates how you can search for a legal topic using Lexis® Search by Topic or Headnote.

Lexis® Search by Topic or Headnote , available by selecting the "Search by Topic or Headnote " tab, is a finding tool you can use to retrieve legal materials based on areas of law and related legal topics. Search by Topic or Headnote allows you to choose the topic you want to research and customize the types of sources and jurisdictions you want to search all in one single search.

One powerful, on-point search can combine your primary law, premium Matthew Bender analysis, law reviews, briefs, pleadings & motions, and more to give you a results set that is unbeatable in its accuracy, depth and breadth.

Suppose you are interested in learning more about copyright law and specifically whether the “fair use defense” against a claim of infringement might apply to your case.

To find relevant legal topics, enter a term or phrase, such as "fair use defense " in the text box labeled "Option 1: Find a Legal Topic." Then select the "Find" button to display a list of legal topics related to fair use defense. Lexis Search by Topic or Headnote retrieves a list of related topics, ranked in order of relevance.

Topic Information is available to help you decide which topic is most relevant to your research issue. To access the information, select the "Information" icon at the left of the topic name.

Topic Information includes:

a content summary prepared by established attorneys with practice experience and extensive backgrounds in online searching,
cross-references to other topics that might be pertinent to your issue, and
background search terms and phrases for the topic.

To review Topic Information for other legal topics, or to select a topic for your search, you need to close the Topic Information box.

To select a topic for your research, click the topic name. At the topic search screen that follows, the Select Jurisdiction drop-down menu lists the sources appropriate for the topic.

To run a search, select a source from the Select Jurisdiction menu, then click the Search button. For a more targeted search, you can also enter search terms in the "Search within cases on this topic" text box, but it isn't necessary to do so.

Next, we’ll look at how to use Search by Topic to research and customize the types of sources and jurisdictions you want to search – all in one single search.

Now you can:

go to the next topic,
go to the previous menu,
display the Help for this topic, or
close this window.

A graphical version of this document also is available.