CRIV BLOG

Elizabeth Outler
eResources Librarian
LAC Group

Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Participants: Elizabeth Outler (CRIV Liaison to Thomson Reuters), Mark Baker (Director of Product Management, Thomson Reuters), Blythe McCoy (Thomson Reuters Information Management Consultant), Michelle Hook Dewey (AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV)

Thomson Reuters provided an overview of their new platform, Westlaw Precision.

• Thomson Reuters developed Westlaw Precision because legal research still takes a lot of time and lawyers are often worried they’ve missed something important.
  • Searches inevitably miss relevant documents due to language variation because courts use different terms than your search to refer to the same concept.
  • How to improve research outcomes and time spent for researchers?
  • Addition of new Precision Attributes to improve case law research in Westlaw Precision: legal issues and outcomes, facts, motions and outcomes, causes of action, party types.
  • New and intuitive classification systems to use these attributes for searching, browsing results, and filtering.

• Added 250 attorneys to editorial staff and trained them to capture the Precision Attributes from cases (in selected topics for the first phase rollout of Westlaw Precision).
  • Machines still can’t do it at the level of quality and reliability needed.
  • Attorney-editor tagging followed by extensive quality control process.

• New Browse Boxes in search result display help researchers quickly and confidently determine whether to read each case – Browse Box includes legal issue and outcome, material facts from the decision, causes of action and motion types (with outcome) from the decision.

• Build a Precision Search by selecting issues and facts in the Precision Search template (on the home page), or run a search in the main search box and then use the new Precision filters to limit your result to cases with your issue, facts, and outcome.
  • Can also use Precision filters to assist with issue-spotting (helpful for law students or more junior attorneys).

• Launched with 8 topics (Antitrust, Commercial Law, Employment Law, Federal Civil Procedure, Federal Class Actions, Federal Discovery and Evidence, Federal Remedies, and Securities Law); post-launch released 3 more: Insurance, Arbitration and Real Estate. State Civil Procedure coming soon.

• Back to 2010 for all published cases in each topic, plus older leading cases (frequently cited).

• Results from a large test involving over 100 attorneys showed that Westlaw Precision users were twice as fast at finding relevant cases compared to Westlaw Edge.

• Significant quality improvements – 90% of participants said Westlaw Precision helped them find cases they might not have found otherwise.

• Rollout to law schools in January.

• Developers are very interested in feedback from users.

Additional features available in Westlaw Precision rollout:

• KeyCite Cited With – what other cases are cited alongside my case?
  • Adjust how closely together the cases are cited.
  • Citing relationship filter – allows you to filter out cases that don’t cite your case or are cited by your case.

• KeyCite Overruled in Part – attempts to solve the “red flag problem,” where a red flag makes a case look like bad law just because one point was overruled.
  • Helps navigate directly to that point of law and highlights the operative language so you don’t have to hunt for it.

• Graphical view of research history
  • Helps navigate research history so you can reconstruct your steps.
  • Highlights documents where you spent a lot of time or returned multiple times.

• Keep list
  • Each item in search result you can bookmark to add to your list (up to 50).
  • Remains across research sessions – move to folders if you want to organize or retain.

• Hide details
  • Click and it will minimize the info displayed in search results so that you can tell you already looked at the case.

• Outline builder
  • Create a research outline in Westlaw and drag language from a case or other document into it.
  • Can submit it to Quick Check and find related case law.
  • Can export to Word.