Research Tips & Tricks: Shepardizing a Statute

[Assoc Dir Law Lib]

If you ever had to find cases that litigated a specific subsection of a statute, especially a statute with many different subsections, you know that it potentially can be difficult.

Here is a research tip that will make it much easier – Shepardize the statute on Lexis Advance and use their feature called Subsection reports by specific court citation to make your life much easier, allowing you to see cases that cite to a specific statutory subsection.

For example, you know that 29 U.S.C. 623(b) is the statute prohibiting age discrimination by employment agencies and you pull it up on Lexis Advance. When you first click on Shepardize the statute, you find that there are over 12,000 decisions that cite to the entire section, i.e. 29 USC 623. Needless to say, many more cases than you can or want to review. But, if you click on Subsection reports by specific court citation and scroll down to sec. 623(b), there are only 106 cases. It makes your research both more precise and efficient!

By the way, Westlaw does NOT have a similar feature but you can construct a comparable search with the statutory citation.

Shepard's® Comprehensive Report: 29 U.S.C. sec. 623
Citing Decisions (12138)
Subsection reports by specific court citation
29 U.S.C. sec. 623 (b) Total Cites:106

Please stop at the reference desk to have a demonstration of this Lexis feature by one of the reference librarians.

Marcia Zubrow
Information Services Coordinator
9/18/2019