Computer-Assisted Legal Research: A Guide for Canadian Law Students

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

Prepared by seven users of computer-assisted research, this guide tries to acquaint the legal community with techniques of online database searching. In addition to strategies for retrieving appropriate case law and statutes, there are numerous examples and reproductions of print-outs, along with practice exercises that may be conducted on QL System’s training database package. This is an excellent introduction, particularly the 15 major practical exercises. But it is also best to use this manual in conjunction with the QL Systems User’s Manual. The appendices detail the forty QL databases and the commands and protocols; they also furnish notes on other systems, such as WESTLAW (U.S.), EUROLEX (U.K.), LEXIS (U.S.), and the general news sources of InfoGlobe and NEXIS. An excellent source document; we could certainly use more of these on a subject-discipline basis.