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Basic Legal Research: Updating Your Research

This guide is intended to support your legal research instruction as a part of Legal Methods. It does not replace any instructions from your professor.

CALI Lessons on Citators

Using Citators to Update Your Research

A citator is a service that shows you:

  • What cases your case cites
  • What cases cite your case
  • Whether a later case or statute has superseded the law in your case

"Updating cases" means checking a citator to see if the case has been overturned, making it bad law. Each of the three big research services-- Lexis, Westlaw, and BloombergLaw-- has a citator, making updating your cases quick and simple.

Use the videos at the right to familiarize yourself with Shepards (Lexis), Keycite (Westlaw), and BCite (BloombergLaw). 

Shepardizing

Keyciting

BCiting