DO:
Pay attention to the "most negative" treatment. If your case has negative treatment, the most severe treatment will be listed right on the document. If your case has a lot of negative treatment, you'll see a Most Negative indicator in your citing references.
Review your case's Table of Authorities. The Table of Authorities tab details all of the cases cited by an opinion organized by the depth of discussion. With TOA, you'll know what cases were most crucial to the opinion and pinpoint each time they are discussed.
Set up a KeyCite alert. If you are monitoring a key case in your argument for any updates, you don't need to log in each and every day. Create a KeyCite's Alert and Westlaw will notify with any changes.
DON'T:
Simply ignore red-flagged cases. A red-flagged case is invalid on at least one of point of law, so there may be perfectly valid points of law within your case that you can use. Ex.
Rodley v. Curry
Turn in an assignment without double checking your citations. The law can change over the course of an assignment, but you have a secret weapon in Quick Check. Upload your assignment and in minutes you will know whether any cases have been overruled or misquoted.
Skip over Headnotes. Knowing what your KeyCite flag means is only half the battle. When reviewing negative treatment, check out the Headnotes column so you know what aspects of your case were discussed (and potentially disagreed with).
DO:
DON'T:
Pay attention to the "most negative" treatment. If your case has negative treatment, the most severe treatment will be listed right on the document. If your case has a lot of negative treatment, you'll see a Most Negative indicator in your citing references.
Simply ignore red-flagged cases. A red-flagged case is invalid on at least one of point of law, so there may be perfectly valid points of law within your case that you can use. Ex.
Rodley v. Curry
Review your case's Table of Authorities. The Table of Authorities tab details all of the cases cited by an opinion organized by the depth of discussion. With TOA, you'll know what cases were most crucial to the opinion and pinpoint each time they are discussed.
Turn in an assignment without double checking your citations. The law can change over the course of an assignment, but you have a secret weapon in Quick Check. Upload your assignment and in minutes you will know whether any cases have been overruled or misquoted.
Set up a KeyCite alert. If you are monitoring a key case in your argument for any updates, you don't need to log in each and every day. Create a KeyCite's Alert and Westlaw will notify with any changes.
Skip over Headnotes. Knowing what your KeyCite flag means is only half the battle. When reviewing negative treatment, check out the Headnotes column so you know what aspects of your case were discussed (and potentially disagreed with).
Did you know?
You can use KeyCite's Graphical History to help you understand the procedural history of a case you are reading for class?
