Librarian Relations Consultant Reviews Fave Features in New Shepard’s® Statute Reports
By Danielle Francis
So you love Shepard’s® Citations Service for case law?
So you love not having to Shepardize® by the books?
So you want to Shepardize statutes—and get more than court citations?
Well now you can! I admit, the first time I Shepardized™ a statute years ago, I did not get the comprehensive report I expected. But the Shepard’s product team at LexisNexis was gathering feedback from librarians, attorneys and other legal professionals to bring the comprehensive Shepard’s treatment we know and love for cases to codes.
Check it out! (And see the March 2009 issue of LexisNexis Information Professional Update for more product details.) What type of citations will you now find in a Shepard’s statute report? You may find these citing sources:
- 800+ Matthew Bender® treatises,
- LexisNexis Briefs, Pleadings & Motions,
- 800+ Law Reviews, as well as
- other statutes.
The Shepard’s Summary box at the top of the report shows you at-a-glance citing references—and a treatment type. Remember: Only Shepard’s shows you true positive treatment, including constitutional, followed and valid.
Of course, positive treatment alone is not enough, is it? Shepard’s has you covered for negative treatment as well with the introduction of the red exclamation point Shepard’s Signal indicator. This new signal—just for statutes—tells you when there has been negative treatment, such as a provision being found unconstitutional or invalid.
Now that we are informed about the codified text of the statute, we need to search Advanced Legislative Services and Bill-Tracking Reports to make sure we have the full picture, right?
Not necessarily. Although there will still be times when you need to search these files, the new Shepard’s report for statutes makes finding that information so much easier. Now simply look for the Pending Legislation and Enacted Legislation links right next to the Shepard’s Summary box.
Pending Legislation links to the full text of bills introduced in the current congress. As always, the full text will have links to the Bill-Tracking Reports, in case you need to follow where the bill is in the legislative process.
Enacted Legislation allows you to quickly retrieve recently passed laws that amend or repeal the federal or state statute but are not yet reflected in the codified version. (This is my favorite part of the new Shepard’s for statutes, and the oohs and ahhs they elicit from my librarian subscribers suggest I’m not alone.)
While these are wonderful additions to Shepard’s, the previous version also had a great feature librarians and researchers loved: showing case citations for subsections of the code. Since Shepard’s product experts were tuned into us, they didn’t “throw out the baby with the bath water,” and kept this excellent breakdown.
Now there is a link to an index of court citations at the bottom of the Shepard’s Summary box; click and move to the subsection breakdown. We kept the best of the previous version, while making important changes such as full treatment by primary and secondary sources; new signals that make it faster, easier, and more cost-effective to research a statute; and a Shepard’s Summary box to guide you along the way.
More States … and Growing
New Shepard’s reports for statutes are available in the United States Code Service as well as for California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas statutes. All state jurisdictions should be available by year-end.
