LibGuides: Law: Database information

Key databases

The Library has a range of specialised databases which you can access to find legal definitions/phrases, journal articles, cases, legislation and legal commentary. The following will be useful for finding information on your legal topics:

AustLII This link opens in a new window
The AustLII collection contains full text databases of most Australian decisions and legislation. AustLII also includes a number of more specialised (subject specific) databases as well as the most comprehensive index to Australian law on the Net. Includes AustLII's case law citator, LawCite.

BarNet Jade
JADE is a legal research solution for legal professionals produced by BarNet. It is the smart way to search, annotate and share Australian legal judgments and decisions for free. For extra features, JADE Professional is available to students on a complimentary basis. Students should send an email to editors@jade.io from their student email address with their current degree and expected year of completion.

CCH IntelliConnect This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the electronic versions of CCH looseleaf services in a number of subject areas including: family, corporations, business, superannuation, taxation, trade practices and consumer law.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Is a full text legal journals database consisting of four major library collections: the Law Journal Library, the Federal Register Library, the Treaties and Agreements Library, and the U.S. Supreme Court Library. These libraries provide exact page images, including charts, graphs and photographs as they originally appeared in print. All the publications in HeinOnline date back to the first issue published.
InfoRMIT This link opens in a new window
Informit is an online service offering a wide range of Australasian indexing and abstracting databases and full content publication products. Databases containing law content include: AGIS Plus Text, APA-FT and CINCH.
LawOne This link opens in a new window
Contains full-text legislation for the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Commonwealth legislation is updated daily and state legislation is updated weekly. This service also includes full-text repealed legislation for these jurisdictions.
Lexis Advance Research This link opens in a new window
Please note that the Law database LexisNexis AU has now been upgraded to Lexis Advance Pacific. It looks quite different from the old database, but all of the same content is available to you. Click on the link to the Quick Guide below to get started on using the new database.

Lexis Advance Research Quick Guide

LexisNexis International (now available on Lexis Advance Research) This link opens in a new window
Is one of the world's largest online database services. It contains thousands of publications which provide extensive sources of information in the areas of law, news, business, finance, government, medicine, technology and other subjects. Full text international legal materials include reports, legislation, law reviews and journals. Most publications in LexisNexis are available in full-text.
Thomson Reuters Westlaw This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text case law, legislation & secondary materials from many international jurisdictions; however coverage is mostly U.S. & Canada.
Westlaw AU This link opens in a new window
Is an online collection of some of the Australian legal materials published byThomson Reuters. Westlaw AU provides access to the full text of law reports, unreported judgments, journals, loose-leaf services, and the research services 'Laws of Australia' and the legal citator 'FirstPoint'.

Search operators for legal databases

AND &	Searches for both terms The default operator
OR	Searches for either term
AND NOT BUT NOT	Exclude terms from your search results
“ ”	Searches for the exact phrase as typed between the quotation marks
/n	Searches terms within n terms of each other (where n is a number)
PRE/n +n	Searches for the first term preceding the second by n terms (where n is a number)
w/s	Searches for terms in the same sentence (converts to w/25)
w/p	Searches for terms in the same paragraph (converts to w/75)
! *	Replaces 0 or more characters to search for alternative word endings
?	Replaces 1 character

AND &	Searches for both terms
OR	Searches for either term The default operator
BUT NOT %	Exclude terms from your search results
“ ”	Searches for the exact phrase as typed between the quotation marks
/n	Searches terms within n terms of each other (where n is a number)
+n	Searches for the first term preceding the second by n terms (where n is a number)
/s	Searches for terms in the same sentence
+s	Searches for a terms preceding within the same sentence
/p	Searches for terms in the same paragraph
+p	Searches for terms preceding within the same paragraph
!	Searches for alternative word endings
*	Searches for 1 character
#	Prefix to turn off plurals and equivalents

AND	Searches for both terms The default operator
OR	Searches for either term
NOT	Exclude term from your search
" "	Searches for the exact phrase as typed between the quotation marks
w/n	Searches terms within n terms of each other (where n is a number) The value of n cannot exceed 127 words.
f/n	Searches for the first term followed by the second term within n terms of each other (where n is a number)
p/n	Searches for the first term preceding the second term within n terms of each other (where n is a number)
w/sen	Searches for terms in the same sentence (converts to w/20)
w/par	Searches for terms in the same paragraph (converts to w/80)
*	Replaces 0 or more characters to search for alternative word endings
?	Replaces 1 character

AND	Returns all documents that contain both the first term and the second term. A "term" can be a single word or complete phrase (no quotes are necessary around a phrase).
OR	Returns all documents that contain either the first term or the second term or both. A "term" can be a single word or complete phrase.
NOT	Finds documents that contain the first word, but do not contain the second. Can be useful to exclude irrelevant documents that contain unique words or titles.
NEAR	Returns all documents where the first term appears nearby the second term. "Near" corresponds to 50 words, which is intended to be roughly the size of a paragraph.
W/n	Returns all documents where the first term appears within n words of the second term, where n is a number you specify.
PRE/n	Returns all documents where the first term precedes the second term by no more than n words, where n is a number you specify.
/n/	Same as W/n operator (above). Finds documents where words and phrases appear within n words of each other where n is a number you specify.
/m,n/	Finer control than W/n (above). Finds documents where words and phrases appear somewhere within m to n words of each other.
TITLE(…)	Limits the search to document titles only.
TRUNCATION AND WILDCARDS	The wildcard/truncation symbol * is used to replace one or more characters in a search term. Note: When searching in AustLII, words searched will automatically match plural. This database is case insensitive. When searching for a phrase there is no need to use quotation marks unless your phrase contains operators.

Note: Boolean characters must be typed in CAPITALS.

AND	Finds all documents that contain both the first term and the second term, e.g. director AND liquidation.
OR	Finds all documents that contain either the first term or the second term or both, e.g. murder OR manslaughter.
NOT	Finds documents that contain the first word, but do not contain the second, e.g. defamation NOT opinion.
w/n	Finds words or phrases within an n number of words of each other, e.g. offensive w/10 conduct.
w/s	Finds words or phrases within the same sentence, e.g. insanity w/s murder.
w/p	Finds words or phrases within the same paragraph, e.g. mitigating w/p rehabilitation.
" "	Place “ “ around a phrase, e.g. “break and enter”.
Truncation and Wildcards	? replaces a single character, e.g. car?. * replaces multiple characters, e.g. act*.

Note: use these operators in a Basic Search
AND	Searches for documents containing both terms.
OR	Searches for documents containing either or both of two terms.
NOT	Searches for documents containing one term but not any other in a record.
Nesting ( )	Use brackets () to construct a more precise search strategy when combining search operators AND, OR, NOT.
Proximity ~	Searches for documents with terms near each other, i.e. debt recovery~5 finds the terms debt and recovery within five words of each other.
Wildcard and Truncation	Wildcard: use a question mark (?) in a search term to represent a single character. Truncation: use an asterisk (*) in a search term to represent zero or more characters.

And	Use the And operator to search for multiple words in the same record. It may be specified any one of three ways: a single space between words, the ampersand &, or the word and.
Or	Use the Or operator to search for multiple words in the infobase (the words may or may not be in the same record). The Or operator may be specified one of two ways: the pipe \| or the word or.
Not	Use the Not operator to search for records which do not contain a particular word or set of word. Not can be used by with only one word, but it is often used in between two. The Not operator may be specified one of two ways: the caret ^ or the word not.
XOr	Use the XOr operator to search for records which contain one of two words but not both. The XOr operator may be specified one of two ways: the tilde ~ or the term xor.
" "	Type the phrase you wish to search for in full quotation marks.
Proximity Operators	(/, @, #) Use proximity operators to indicate how close the words must be together e.g. dog w/5 cat.
Truncation and Wildcards	To replace single character use ? To replace multiple characters use * To find synonyms use $ To find word forms use % You can use Wildcards in both phrase and proximity searches. It is important to note that due to the complexity of wildcard and phrase searches – when you conduct these in legislation you may find they take a long time.

AND	Matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document (The symbol "&&" can be used in place of the word AND).
OR	Links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.
NOT	Excludes documents that contain the term after NOT (The symbol "!" can be used in place of the word NOT).
PROXIMITY SEARCHES	"~" ( tilde symbol) - use at the end of a phrase to find words which are a within a specific distance away. w/# or /# - use to find two terms within a certain number of words of each other in a document (# equals a number). w/s or /s - use to find two terms within (approximately) the same sentence. The syntax defines a sentence as within 25 words. NOTE: The current syntax does not support the use of a proximity search with phrase searching. To look for a phrase in proximity to another phrase, enter ALL words in quotes and use the tilde symbol with he desired number.
TRUNCATION AND WILDCARDS	To perform a single-character wildcard search use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple-character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.
FIELD SEARCHING	You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for.For example: title: "The Right Way" AND text: "go this way".