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Westlaw

Westlaw is the industry standard for online legal research, now with artificial intelligence to help you streamline your legal research—but you'll pay for it if you want more than just the basics.

Westlaw Rating:
2.5/5

Features

  • Customer Experience & Support - 8/10
    8/10
  • Pricing & Value - 8/10
    8/10
  • Innovation & Future-Proofing - 8/10
    8/10
Comments Rating 1 (1 review)
Details

Rating Breakdown

Our Rating: 4/5

Our rating is based on our subjective judgment. Use our resources—including our rating and community ratings and reviews—to find the best fit for your firm.

Community Rating: 1/5 (based on 1 rating)

The community rating is based on the average of the community reviews below.

Composite Rating: 2.5/5

The composite rating is a weighted average of our rating and the community ratings below.

Who Westlaw is For

Westlaw’s new, more affordable basic plans are likely to be more attractive to firms of all sizes. But if you need comprehensive legal research, Westlaw is still cost-prohibitive for many solo and small firms. As a result, Westlaw is usually best suited to larger law firms or those with specific needs that can’t be met by the competition.

Westlaw Features

Website
legal.thomsonreuters.com
Starting Cost
$75/user/month
Free Trial
✓
Apps
  • Web
  • iOS
Sources
US State Cases
All 50 States
US State Statutes
All 50 States
US Cases
✓
US Statutes
✓
Dockets
✓
Secondary Sources
✓
News Coverage
✓
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI legal assistants can help you identify relevant cases and statutes, and may even help you draft your brief.
✓
Natural Language Search
Can you search by entering a question in normal language rather than keywords or Boolean connectors and phrases?
✓
Boolean Search
With Boolean operators like AND, OR, and more, you can precisely target your search query.
✓
Case Summaries
✓
Citation Checking
A citation checker helps you identify whether a case or statute has been overruled, modified, or reversed or repealed.
✓
Filter Search
Can you restrict your search to certain parts or features of cases and statutes, like the date, judge, or jurisdiction?
✓
Research History
Research history makes it easier to find the results of previous searches or see if the law has changed with new results.
✓
Research Folders
Organize your research history into folders.
✓
PDF/Word Downloads
Download cases and statutes as a formatted PDF or Word document.
✓
Suggestions
When you run a search, get suggestions for additional searches to run or material you should look at.
✓
Alerts
Flag key cases so that you get an email notification if it is cited in a new case, statute, or secondary source.
✓
Software Integrations
  • None
Open API
✗

Things You Might Want to Know

KeyCite Overruling Risk. KeyCite Overruling Risk comes with your Edge subscription and expands KeyCite by flagging a case if it relies on bad or overruled law. You can still find cases that have been explicitly overruled through Keycite. This saves you time by looking at all those cases at once.

Statutes Compare. Statutes Compare allows you to compare statutory revisions on the state and federal level to help you understand the legislative intent. This insight lets you incorporate legislative intent in your business advice and litigation advocacy. Statutes Compare shows you exactly how a statute has evolved and is included with your Westlaw Edge subscription.

Secondary sources galore. The software features a comprehensive secondary sources database that lets you bookmark favorite publications and browse through publications in a streamlined user interface.

Page edited by the Lawyerist editorial team. Last updated November 27th, 2019.

1 Westlaw Community Review

  1. Avatar Shayla D. says:
    September 13, 2019 at 5:26 am

    Fake free trial

    I literally signed up for a 7 day free trial, and tried it out for a few hours tops. It kept logging me out. I tried to sign back in hours later and it said I could no longer have access. I called the number, and I was literally told that I had used up my 5 free hours. According to them, it’s 5 free hours or 7 days, whichever occurs first. That’s not true! I used it for only 2 hours. They should know since they track all search history, etc. What a joke! Right off the bat and these guys are alerady breaching imlied warranties! Being dishonest right off the bat is not the best way to win customers. I’ll keep shopping.

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