Lexis-Nexis is which publishes several databases to which Lehigh's library subscribes. Lexis-Nexis Academic is the one to use to search for federal court case information. Follow the sequence of steps below to research court cases in the database:

1) To access Lexis-Nexis Academic, go to the Lehigh library home page (http://www.lehigh.edu/library).

2) Click on the databases link under the "Electronic Resources" section. Scroll down to Lexis-Nexis Academic. Click on the appropriate link depending on if you are using a computer from on- or off-campus.

3) Once inside Lexis-Nexis Academic, select Legal Research from the list of available options (see below).

4) This takes you to a screen that breaks down all of the information contained in the Legal Research section.

5) To search for a court case, scroll down to the Case Law section and click on Get a Case. You will be taken to this screen:

6) There are two ways to search for a case. You could either type in the names of the plaintiff and the defendant in the case into the Party name: search boxes. For example:

NOTE:

• When searching by party name Lexis-Nexis Academic searches for matching words in the title section of the court case. If the party names match the case exactly, the case you are looking for may be the only case returned and it will appear at the top of the result list. However, you may get additional results especially if the party names don't match a case exactly.
• If you don't find the case you are looking for, try leaving off one or more of the words in a party name. Notice in the example only "american textile" is entered as a party name. This is because entering "american textile man." did not produce any results. (The official name of the case is American Textile Mfrs. Inst. v. Donovan including the abbreviation "man." in a search would prevent this case from being retrieved.)

NOTE:

• Searching by "party name" is the default search method. To search by citation you will need to click on the circle to the left of the word "Citation". A black dot will appear in the circle indicating that the citation search has been selected.
• Don't forget to include any punctuation in the citation as a part of your search. Typing in "US" instead of "U.S." will produce different results.

9) Clicking on the title (in blue) will take you to the full text of the case. A row of buttons are listed at the top of the screen (see below).

10) Click on the "Print/Save Options" button and follow the instructions on subsequent screens in order to print or save the case to a computer disk. Click on the "E-mail" button to e-mail the case to your e-mail account.