Using the Shepard's® Table of Authorities Results

The Shepard's® table of authorities provides another Shepard's Citations Service tool to help you determine the validity and usefulness of a legal document for your legal research. Shepardizing™ a case tells you its subsequent treatment; generating a Shepard's table of authorities for the case tells you the subsequent treatment of each of the cited references supporting the case. Generating a Shepard's table of authorities gives you the same result as Shepardizing each cited reference—instantly.

The Shepard's table of authorities lists each cited reference in your case, in order by jurisdiction. For each reference, you'll see the following items:

• How your case relies on the cited reference (Following, Citing, etc.).
• A link to the full text of the cited reference.
• The current treatment status of the reference, as indicated by the Shepard's Signal indicator following the reference. You can click the Shepard's Signal indicator to Shepardize® that case for further analysis.

For examples of case law and statute citation formats and analysis definitions, click TOA Product Guide. Another browser window will open to the Shepard's Table of Authorities Product Guide, which contains detailed information on reporter and citation abbreviations. To return to the LexisNexis® research services Help or product window, just close or minimize the LexisNexis Product Guide window.

Select one of the links below for more information about browsing the Shepard's Report.

New TOA

View Formats (Cite, Full)

Total Cites / Prev - Next

View Printable Version Feature

Delivering Your Documents

      (Print, Download, Fax, Email)

Show/Hide Parallel Cites

Unrestricted

Custom

Using the FOCUST Feature in the

      Shepard's® Table of Authorities

Shepard's® Table of Authorities for:

The Shepard's Signal Indicator

Shepardize®

Shepard's Signal Indicator in Cited References

Legend

Treatment Analysis

Trail

New TOA

To generate a table of authorities for another citation, enter the citation in the "New TOA:" box at the top of the screen, and click the Go button.

View Formats

You can look at your list of search results in two different view formats, (Cite, or Full), available through links at the top of your browse page. Each view format displays a different level of detail.

Cite View

You will see this view format only when there is more than one TOA available for the citation you entered. Click a citation to display the TOA report for it.

Full View

Choose this view to display the treatment of each of the cited references supporting the case.

You can easily switch view formats by clicking on the appropriate link.

Total Cites / Prev - Next

This line tells you how many total cites are displayed in the current Shepard's table of authorities for this case, and how many ("n of nnn") are displayed on this page. If there are more citations in the report than are displayed on this page, you can use the "Prev" and "Next" buttons to "page" through the report.

Show/Hide Parallel Cites

Click "Show Parallel Cites" for each cited reference. To hide the parallel cites, click "Hide Parallel Cites".

Unrestricted

Click the Unrestricted link to view all citing references for the case you entered, with no restrictions applied.

FOCUS™ - Restrict By

Click the "FOCUS™ - Restrict By" link to view only citing references with customized restrictions. You'll see a page where you can specify restrictions by FOCUS™ terms, analysis and jurisdiction. You can select restrictions in each category, or click the "Select All" link to select all the restrictions in that category. You can also use the "Clear All " link to clear all your selections in a category.

Note:  If you select all restrictions in a category, your report will contain all citing references in that category (as if you had selected "any" analysis code, "any" jurisdiction, etc.).

After selecting all desired restrictions, click Apply. If you make some choices but then want to start over, click the Cancel button to clear the current choices.

Using the FOCUST Feature with Shepard's TOA

Using the FOCUS feature with Shepard's TOA enables you to search the full text of the documents in the Shepard's TOA report so you can closely target your references. No new documents are retrieved during a FOCUS search; your FOCUS results are derived from your original results.

Keep in mind that the FOCUS feature searches only those documents that are actually available on the LexisNexis services. The FOCUS feature works only in answer sets of fewer than 2,000 documents.

You can use many search tools to apply the FOCUS feature to your Shepard's results, including segment searches, proximity connectors (w/n, or, and), universal characters (* and !), the ATLEAST command, and others.

Shepard's® Table of Authorities for:

The citation shown here is a link to the full text of the case for the citation you entered to generate the Shepard's table of authorities. Click this link to display the full text of the case.

Shepard's Signal

The Shepard's Signal indicator displayed at the top of the page indicates how other legal authorities have treated your case. To see a definition of the signal, leave your mouse pointer over the signal for a few seconds. For a definition of all of the Shepard's Signal indicators, refer to the Legend at the bottom of the page.

Shepardize®

Click this link to Shepardize the citation you entered.

Shepard's Signal in Cited References

In the body of the Shepard's TOA report, cited references are followed by a Shepard's Signal when this option is checked on the Shepard's Preferences page. By default, this option is turned off; to turn it on, go to the Shepard's Preferences page and check Show Citing Reference Signals under Shepard's Default Display).

Signal Legend

A legend showing all the Shepard's Signal indicators and the definition of each is displayed at the bottom of the report.

Treatment Analysis

To see the definition of a particular treatment analysis (such as "distinguished" or "followed"), let your cursor hover over the analysis for a moment. When an underline appears under the analysis, click it to open a secondary window that displays the definition of the treatment analysis.

Trail

The word "Trail" at the bottom of the TOA page shows the path of your research up to the current results, including whether you have used the FOCUS™ feature to narrow your results.