Nexis Uni

Nexis Uni contains cases and statutes, and allows you to update them (called "Shepardizing.")  If you are a student with access to Westlaw or Lexis Advance, Nexis Uni is probably not the database you want to use, because Nexis Uni is a more limited version of Lexis Advance, without as much access to secondary sources.  However, if you do not have access to these other databases, Nexis Uni is a great choice for online legal research, especially for primary sources like cases, statutes, and regulations.  Nexis Uni has:

• state and federal cases
• state and federal statutes
• state and federal regulations
• the Federal Register and select state registers
• law reviews
• news
• company information

If you want to only search specific sources, or if you just want to see what sources are available, click on "All Sources" under the "Menu" tab:

The sources are arranged alphabetically, but you can filter the sources by category, jurisdiction, practice area, and other areas:

Which search should I use?

• use "Advanced Search" if you know something about the document you are trying to retrieve but don't have a citation
• use "Get a Doc Assistance" if you know a citation, the party names of a case, or a docket number

How to search?

• in Basic Search and Advanced Search, you can use either natural language or Boolean search terms
• In both Basic Search and Advanced Search you can use AND, OR, and NOT in your searches.   
  • Search for documents that contain all of your possible words (for example: cocaine AND sentencing)
  • Search for documents that contain at least one of you possible words (for example: "climate change" OR "global warming")
  • Include a word but exclude others (for example: teaching NOT shortage). 
• If you want to search a phrase, put the phrase in quotes 
• Use a question mark and asterisk to expand word variations in your search
  • A question mark replaces a single letter in a word, so mari?uana would search for both marijuana and marihuana   
  • An asterisk can replace single or multiple letters, so walk* would retrieve walk, walks, walked, walkers, walking, walkway, etc. 
• Use /n to search for words that are near one another
  • For example, "stem cell" /5 research, retrieves documents that have "stem cell" within five words of "research"
  • You can also use /s to search for words that are within the same sentence or approximately 25 words of each other, /p to search for words that are within the same paragraph or within approximately 75 words of each other, and /seg to search for words that are within the same segment, or approximately 100 words of each other
• Use pre/n to search for documents where the first word precedes the second word by more than "n" words
  • For example, if you want to find documents where "overtime" precedes "compensation by not more than 3 words, search" overtime pre/3 compensation
  • You can also search pre/p to find documents where one word precedes another by not more than 75 words, and pre/s to find documents where one word precedes another by not more than 25 words
• For more information on searching, click on the "Tips" link, underneath the search bar: