With origins dating back to 1861, the University of Lincoln provides a wide range of courses to over 14,000 undergraduates and 2,000 postgraduates. According to the Guardian University Guide 2023, it’s one of the top 30 universities in the UK in terms of student satisfaction, and is listed in the world's top 130 in the Times Higher Education’s (THE) Young University Rankings 2022.
The facilities of its law school include a mock courtroom located on campus and access to Lexis+ Legal Research for students and staff. We spoke to Barry Turner, a Senior Lecturer in Law and Pharmacy, to find out how LexisNexis helps faculty and students stay on top of legal research.
“At least three times as fast”
Barry is well versed in the art of legal research and prides himself on his ability to quickly identify the relevant source materials pertaining to any new legal concept. But despite his significant skills and experience, he considers Lexis+ Legal Research a crucial tool for speeding up research from scratch: “the speed of access is phenomenal… it's almost instant… the search method takes you to pivotal legal authorities immediately” and “it’s particularly rapid for getting to case law”.
He is even able to quantify the time savings afforded by harnessing the power of Lexis+ Legal Research compared to other methods of legal research:
“It's at least three times as fast as doing it any other way… the speed, and the direct access makes an enormous amount of difference. And it's all also less tiring, because you don't have to go through lots of other stuff.”
Powerful search functionality
The search interface built into Lexis+ Legal Research turbocharges the overall legal research process for staff and students, with its ability to filter results when conducting specific searches. Barry says that even in the case of “a relatively wide search, you can narrow it down really rapidly” with the filtering tools provided.
But aside from the immeasurable efficiency savings compared to “the days of going through printed law reports”, one of the boons of using a modern bespoke search tool “is the ease of use and the fact that you can go directly to the particular issues that you're looking at. And the cross referencing is obviously effectively done for you.”
Content which you know you can rely on
As a university lecturer, Barry emphasises the importance of being up to date with the latest legal developments; he advises his students against relying on second-hand books. One of the advantages of Lexis+ Legal Research is the assurance that all information is based on the most recent legislation and case law. Citing the example of consumer rights research, he says that “if I was looking for issues to do with consumer rights through LexisNexis, it would take me directly to the brand new stuff - some of it maybe only a couple of weeks old.” In the case of pharmacy law or medical law, this kind of resource is invaluable, as the subjects “are so complex and rapidly changing that you need a very reliable system.”
As well as being regularly updated, one of the advantages of using Lexis+ Legal Research is the reassurance that all the commentary is professionally written and edited, so it can be safely relied upon by legal practitioners. In addition to providing an accurate overview of any particular aspect of law, it’s possible to drill down further into each subject area: ”
Barry’s colleague, Helen Williams – Academic Subject Librarian, added: “I feel Lexis+ will become the preferred legal research tool for many students following the update to the interface and the library’s recent upgrade to the full academic library.”
Practical application
Barry thinks it would be “very strange for an academic institution such as a university not to have access to” the kind of research resource offered by Lexis+ Legal Research, particularly in the case of postgraduate research. The standard research methods which were commonplace in law libraries only a couple of decades ago would now seem very archaic.
But aside from academic research, he argues that it’s a vital tool for legal professionals: “in legal practice it obviously saves you an enormous amount of time. You certainly don't want to be spending many hours going through paperwork, when you can get straight to the point.” He considers that “it would be an essential tool to have in a professional capacity”, and that “the amount of time it would save you cumulatively over a year would be huge”.
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