Casebase Vs Firstpoint

CaseBase vs FirstPoint

CaseBase FirstPoint [LexisNexis AU] [Legal Online] Coverage . Reported Australian cases. . Reported Australian cases since 1825 Coverage is not comprehensive for . Unreported decisions only from historical cases September 1999 onwards. . Far more unreported decisions than FirstPoint . Selected UK, NZ and other overseas decisions Catchwords . Many historical cases do not have . Virtually all cases have some kind of & Digest catchwords or a digest, but subject treatment CaseBase digests more unreported . Cases are classified with standard decisions than FirstPoint subject headings. . Catchwords may be more specific . Subject headings can be less specific than on FirstPoint, but are not than those on CaseBase, but they are necessarily consistent across cases consistent across cases . CaseBase appears to be faster at . Can click on a heading to find cases adding catchwords / digests for on the same point of law. recent decisions. Citing cases . ‘Comprehensive’ - Casebase aims . ‘Selective’ – FirstPoint aims to cover to list every case that has cases that consider the primary case mentioned the primary case. in some depth, i.e. does not include Selected UK and NZ cases that cite cases that only cite the primary case Australian cases are also listed. in a string of references

Legislation . ‘Comprehensive’ – CaseBase aims . ‘Selective’ – FirstPoint only indexes judicially to index every piece of legislation legislation that is actually discussed in considered mentioned in the case (though some the judgment. passing references and references . This is useful when researching which are purely procedural may be common provisions, as it can help omitted). you to identify the most relevant . This is useful when conducting cases quickly. exhaustive research or when researching obscure provisions. Links to law . Casebase provides links to reports . FirstPoint provides links to reports reports and published by LexisNexis, e.g. the published by Lawbook (Thomson judgments ALR (but not the CLR). Reuters), e.g. the CLR and ALJR. . CaseBase provides links to . FirstPoint provides links to unreported unreported judgments on LNAU. judgments on Legal Online, from Has much better historical coverage September 1999 onwards. of unreported decisions, including selected decisions back to the 1970s. Articles . Casebase includes more references . FirstPoint includes some article to articles, also has more detail references, but far fewer than about individual articles (some have CaseBase. Older entries only note the their own record as well) citation of the article and without the title of the article it can be difficult to establish whether it’s relevant. Date Excellent date searching options: Very limited date searching options: searching . Specific date . Cannot search for a specific date . Date range . Can specify a range of years (e.g. . Date is before / after / between 2000-2010) . Last week / month / year etc (lots of . Can limit to cases added in the last options) 7 / 30 / 60 / 90 days.

Compiled by Larissa Reid, Reader Services Librarian, Law Courts Library, June 2010 1 CaseBase vs FirstPoint

Limits . Limit by jurisdiction / court (you can . Limit by jurisdiction / court (but you select as many as you need) can only select one jurisdiction and/or court at a time) . Limit by area of law (classification) . Limit to reported decisions

Case names Case name: Case name: . Case name is just the s Short form, usually as given by the court . Includes some popular names ‘Party names’ field which spells out all party names in full (particularly useful in cases involving multiple parties) from 2005 onwards

Popular names: Popular names: Includes some popular names Includes some popular names. . searchable via case name field. . searchable via case title field or by using ‘popular name’ segment search.

General Remember to use and between search Click on the field name to access specific search tips terms, otherwise database will treat your search tips for each field. Generally, the terms as a phrase default is the AND operator (except in the citation field, where the default is a phrase search)

CaseBase has more flexible proximity FirstPoint only has one type of proximity operators (e.g. w/p, w/s, w/n), which can search (search terms within X terms of be combined with wildcards. each other).

You cannot use wildcards or truncation if you are doing a phrase search or using proximity operators.

General Not case sensitive, but you can force it Not case sensitive and no way around search tips to be, by using special search operators this. (cont.) such as ALLCAPS, CAPS, NOCAPS)

Automatically searches for both singular and standard plural forms of your search terms

History Began as the Australasian Case Integration of the Australian Case Citator, Annotator (print), then transformed into the Australian Digest and the ALMD. the CaseBase CD-ROM, then it was bought by LexisNexis.

Compiled by Larissa Reid, Reader Services Librarian, Law Courts Library, June 2010 2