Ever get mired down in trying to dig up old federal regulations on the government’s antiquated Canada Gazette Archives? Fortunately, vLex Canada is here to help with that. Following our previous tips on Irwin Law Essentials and MLB Topics, today we’ll have a quick look on how to find older regulations in Part II of the Canada Gazette, now available on the new vLex Canada platform.

The easiest way to get to the Gazette from the vLex homepage is to click on “Browse” in the lefthand toolbar. From there, click on the “List of Sources” tab in the top under the search bar, and you will come to a screen like the following. The Canada Gazette is one of the first listed, with the French equivalent Gazette du Canada found a little further down.

Clicking on the Gazette will bring you straight to the most recently published edition. To find older editions, simply click the “Older Issues” button in the righthand sidebar, and it will pop up with an option to select which month you are interested in:

As you can see, coverage on the platform goes back to January 1998.

After selecting the issue you are interested in, a table of contents will open where you can click through to the Regulation that you are looking for.

Perhaps what is best about all this though, is that search bar at the top of the page. If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you can search through all the available issues of the Canada Gazette by using the search with the Gazette filter on. This provides better functionality than the official government website for the same – plus the clean interface of vLex’s platform which is much easier on the eyes!

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!