Last time we had a look at the Irwin Law Essentials collection which is now available on vLex, and continuing with our tips for the new database, today we’ll be having a peek at the MLB (Maritime Law Book) Topics and how they can help your research.

If you’ve ever taken any legal research training sessions from us, you’re probably aware that we are very much fans of skipping keyword searching altogether. It’s messy, ugly, and for the most part you get dumped on with a load of garbage.

Ok perhaps I’m exaggerating, but instead of wasting time picking through thousands of cases, we very much advocate for whatever publications or shortcuts you can use to cut down your research time. MLB topics are one of those shortcuts: they group similar cases by topics, so if you find a case that is relevant, you can click on the topic you’re interested in and find similar cases really quickly. You can also browse the topics, as we’ll see below.

From the homepage of vLex, select “Browse” from the sidebar. From there, navigate to “MLB Topics” in top menu. You’ll see a list of alphabetical topics you can now either search or peruse through.

Clicking on any one of these topics will bring up a listing of all the specific topics under that heading. For example, Contracts:

From here you can click through to any topics that interest you to find links to cases that are under that topic.

Similarly, if you are looking at a case on vLex, at the top of the case all the MLB topics will be listed so you can select your issue and find similar cases on that point of law. At the top of each case it will look something like this:

Clicking on any one of those magnifying glass will search that classification and bring up a list of cases on the topic. So skip the keyword case searching and browse through the MLB topics instead!

As you may have heard or seen in-library, we now have access to the vLex Canada database! We’ll be showcasing some tips over the next couple of weeks to help you get some idea as to the uses and functionality of this new database.

First up: the Irwin Law Essentials Collection!

You might be familiar with these books in print; they are extremely popular in our library and can usually be distinguished at a glance by their characteristic maroon colour. Some of the most well-known titles include: The Law of Evidence by Paciocco and Stuesser, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Sharpe and Roach, and Child Support Guidelines in Canada by Payne and Payne. Fortunately, they are now also available in electronic format on vLex Canada!

To access them, simply log in to vLex and click on “Browse” in the sidebar. Under “Books and Journals”, you will then find a link to Irwin Law: The Essentials of Canadian Law. From there, you can see all of the titles currently available on the platform, as can be seen in the screenshot below:

Once you click on a title, it will bring you through to a table of contents where you can browse to find what you need. You can then click through to individual sections and chapters to view the text.

At any time, you can click into the search bar at the top of the screen. If you only want to search the subsection of the content you are viewing, click on the option for “Advanced Search”, as it appears, and that will only search the particular section. You can see an example of this below.

Stay tuned for more vLex tips, and in the meantime, come to the library and play around with it yourself! With an account you will then have 24 hour access from anywhere!

This is a great new tip we learned about in WestlawNext Canada, from our amazing local trainer Josée Provost.

If you’re anything like us, you love the Canadian Abridgment for quickly and easily finding cases on a specific topic. To make your case law research even easier, you can now filter search results from a note-up in Westlaw by Adbridgment topic. Here’s an example below.

Through noting-up section 13 of the Employment Standards Act, 2000, I’m told there are 190 cases that cite this section. On the left hand side of the screen are your filtering options. Tucked in second from the bottom is “Abridgment Topics.”

If you click on “Select” a box will open up showing you a list of topics from within the Abridgment that have this cases included. You can also search for a topic (if there is nothing, you’ll be told there are no hits).

You can select as many topics as you would like. For this example, I’ll select “Contracts”…

And I have limited the 190 citing cases down to just 3 that have to do with contracts.

This feature is really neat, and I know will come in handy to many people during their case law research. If you’d like to learn more about WestlawNext Canada, we do have a free lunch time training session at the library scheduled for November 22. You can RSVP for this session here.