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Guide to Online Legal Research

Finding legal abbreviations

Legal abbreviations are often used to identify legal publications such as law reports and journals. Use one of the following tools to interpret the abbreviation and then you can search the SCU Library catalogue to check for the location of the publication.

Finding judicial consideration of legal words and phrases

  1. Go to Lexis Advance Research.
  2. Click on CaseBase Cases under the Publications list.
  3. Click on Go to Advanced Search.
  4. You will be taken to the CaseBase search form.
  5. In the Words and Phrases Judicially Considered box, enter a legal word/phrase.
  6. Select Jurisdiction if required.
  7. Click on Search.
  8. A list of cases that have judicially defined the legal word/phrase will be displayed.
  1. Go to Westlaw AU.
  2. Click on Cases and Advanced.
  3. Enter your terms in the Words & Phrases search box.
  4. Click on Search.
  5. A list of cases that have judicially defined the legal word/phrase will be displayed.

Finding definitions of legal words and phrases

  1. Go to Lexis Advance Research.
  2. Click on the link to View all AU Publications under the 'Publications' list.
  3. Browse in the alphabetical list for 'Australian Legal Words & Phrases'.
  4. Click on the link to Table of Contents-Australian Legal Words & Phrases.
  5. Enter term/s into the Search box.
  6. Click on the Search.
  1. Go to Lexis Advance Research.
  2. Click on Encyclopaedic Australian Legal Dictionary under the Publications list.
  3. Click on Go to Advanced Search.
  4. In the Defined Terms box, enter search term/s.
  5. Click on Search.

Other useful dictionaries

Subjects: Law
Tags: law, legal, research
  
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