Westlaw Canada New Product Releases - April 2011
April 18, 2011
Legal Memoranda and Points of Law – give your research a head start
April 2011 marks the launch of the Carswell Legal Memoranda & Points of Law Collection, a continuously growing electronic library of legal research work conducted by expert practitioners and commercial legal researchers. This collection will be available as a subscription, although non-subscribers may view individual memos on a pay-per-use basis. Click here to find out more
New KeyCite® Canada Limits will help you pinpoint the judicial treatments you need
Limit by subsection or clause: It is now possible to use KeyCite limits to select only the treatment for the particular subsections or clauses you want. As you know, when you retrieve a legislative provision on KeyCite, Westlaw® Canada gives you all the judicial treatments for the entire section, breaking down the list of judicial treatments according to the particular subsection or clause that was treated. Since there can be hundreds or even thousands of judicial treatments for some legislative sections, users who are only interested in a particular subsection might have to scroll through pages of documents before they reach the particular provision they want. Click here to find out more
Limit by treatment type: The ability to limit KeyCite results now makes it possible, after you have retrieved a case or legislative provision, to get a breakdown of the results by treatment type. You can restrict your results to view only the treatment types that are of interest to you. Click here to find out more
Improved Old/New Rule Search Capability on Litigator
When searching for Motion or Motion-Factum court documents, a new set of court rules need not tax your research time with duplicate searches under each set of rules.
Litigator features the option to search both “Old” and “New” versions of a particular court rule at the same time and with minimal effort. Click here to find out more
How to Use this Feature: In the custom search template, identify the familiar set of rules (whether old or new) to search in the Rule Name dropdown menu. Key in the desired rule number to search, and click the new “Include old/new rule equivalent” checkbox. Then click Search.
What this Feature Provides: In addition to the Motions (or Motion-Facta, as applicable) filed under the familiar rule, your search results will yield court documents that have been filed under the corresponding version of that rule, as ascertained by the Old/New Rules concordance. In other words, you will have searched both sets of court rules simultaneously.
Link directly to historical criminal legislation with Crankshaw’s Legislative Histories
Researching historical criminal legislation is now quick and easy. Links connect key provisions of current criminal legislation with historical versions, allowing users to quickly identify changes.
Use available links to move between present and past versions of criminal legislation.
Links will appear directly beneath annotated sections of key statutes as well as through the “Annotations” link. This new feature is available on relevant statutes in both official languages. Click here to find out more
Westlaw Canada International Solutions
The following databases have been added to international subscriptions on Westlaw Canada: IBA Convergence, Competition Law International, and Global Information Technology Law. These databases are exclusive to Westlaw Canada. Click here to find out more
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Important Notification - ResultsPlus now includes Westlaw Canada Facta
December 6, 2010
Back in July, we announced the addition of ResultsPlus to Westlaw® Canada. ResultsPlus enriches your case law research by recommending analytical material related to your search along with your case law search results. To date ResultsPlus has drawn all its analytical suggestions from one source – the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED).
We are pleased to announce that we are now extending the scope of ResultsPlus to include suggestions from the Westlaw Canada collection of facta in addition to suggestions from the CED. This collection adds thousands of documents to the pool of analytical material drawn on by ResultsPlus and provides analysis of a wide variety of issues litigated in Canadian courts. Click here to learn more
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ResultsPlus Launch
June 28, 2010
We are pleased to announce the launch of ResultsPlus, a new search tool which uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools to suggest relevant analytical material along with your case law results.
Where will you see ResultsPlus suggestions? ResultsPlus will provide information in two contexts:
- When you view the full screen result list* for any case law search, ResultsPlus will suggest related analytical material along with your case law results.
*If you do not view the full screen list by default, you can access it either by clicking on the link at the upper left of your result list, or by checking off Display Result List when search completes in your Document Display preferences.
- When you view any case law decision, ResultsPlus will suggest related analytical materials relevant to the issues discussed in the full text decision under the Related Info tab: You will see up to three suggestions in the Related Info tab on the left frame of a case law document. These represent the suggestions the ResultsPlus ranking engine has deemed most likely to be related to the case at hand. Up to two more suggestions may be found by selecting the View All Results link.
Which analytical material will be suggested by ResultsPlus?
Initially, all suggested analytical material will derive from the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest. Going forward, we will be adding other commentary, beginning with factum documents from Litigator.
What will it cost to use ResultsPlus?
ResultsPlus suggestions will appear on your screen automatically at no charge. If you link to a document suggested by ResultsPlus that is part of your subscription, the transaction will be deemed a Find transaction within your subscription. If you link to a document outside your subscription, you will see a pay-per-view warning screen, and if you continue, you will be charged the usual outside subscription rate for linking to that type of document.
How can you make the best use of ResultsPlus suggestions?
The principal value of ResultsPlus is that it can often find relevant CED documents that other search methods fail to retrieve, and that it displays these for you without your having to actively search for them. This tool, however, is best viewed as a supplement rather than a replacement for traditional means of finding secondary source documents relevant to the issues you are researching. The documents proposed through ResultsPlus should not be viewed as providing a definitive list of CED documents related to your search or case law document; you should neither assume that it has found all relevant CED documents nor that all suggestions made by ResultsPlus will be helpful to you.
ResultsPlus with Search: The Results Plus suggestions made following a case law search differ from a direct search on the data in several ways, the principal ones being that it strips out from the case law search any connectors and field restrictions and processes its CED search similarly to a natural language search. It therefore does not lend itself to very precise queries that can be performed through a CED custom template or terms and connectors search. On the other hand, it can find related documents even if the vocabulary used in case law search is not found precisely in the related CED document.
ResultsPlus with Documents: The ResultsPlus suggestions for CED documents related to a particular case will not necessarily be identical with the CED documents you find when you view the KeyCite Citing References for a case. CED citing references include only cases that are directly cited in a CED document. ResultsPlus can, however, find CED documents for any case regardless of whether that case has been cited in the CED.
As we continue to add analytical content to the universe of ResultsPlus suggestions, we trust that you will find ResultsPlus to be an increasingly valuable tool for enhancing the efficiency and ensuring the completeness of your case law research.
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Citation frequency notes now on Westlaw Canada
June 16, 2010
Westlaw® Canada case law results lists now indicate how many times a judicial decision has been cited by the Courts, providing a new strategy for identifying cases that have the most precedential value. Appearing both in search and KeyCite® Canada result lists, citation frequency notes will be an especially useful tool when you are faced with a large number of hits in a search result or a large number of KeyCite citing references for a case or legislative provision. You will also be able to limit your search and KeyCite results using this criterion, on its own or in combination with other ways of limiting your results.
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Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Estates & Trusts Planning Concordances and Rules Concordance now available on Estates&TrustsSource
January 10, 2010
Westlaw® Canada is pleased to announce the addition of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Estates & Trusts Planning Concordances and Rules Concordance to Estates&TrustsSource®. The Editor-In-Chief of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Estates & Trusts Planning Concordances is John E. S. Poyser, B.A. LL.B., TEP, of the Wealth and Estate Law practice at Inkster Christie Hughes LLP.
The Estates&TrustsSource CBA Concordances will be displayed in a table format on Estates&TrustsSource. The tables will be listed by jurisdiction within an easy to navigate table of contents. Each jurisdiction is then sub-divided by the concordance table titles (i.e. Will & Trust Planning, Incapacity, etc.). This segmented table set-up removes the need to scroll through large and cumbersome tables, allowing you to access your required table section quickly and easily.
Another feature available in the Estates&TrustsSource CBA Table of Concordances is the ability to link to Case Law and Legislation that is listed within the tables. With one click, you will be taken to case listing or main Legislation citation on Westlaw Canada.
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