Making good choices: Canadian electronic research

Evaluation criteria

The criteria for selecting an appropriate electronic research tool are similar to those for evaluating print sources:

• comprehensiveness
• accuracy
• currency
• quality of content
• ease of use
• cost.

However, this task is more complex in the electronic research world because of the large range of research functions the major sources offer; the complexity of their pricing; and the differing results depending on the search engine, the content, the interface, and the expertise of the user.

This paper explores the comparative strengths and weaknesses of Quicklaw Full Service and LawSource. It also considers what CanLII can offer as an alternative to the commercial services. The paper is organized based on common research tasks.

Search interface

LawSource, Quicklaw and CanLII all permit users to find documents by name or citation, as well as to conduct keyword searches in the full text.

LawSource, Quicklaw and CanLII assume that most users will want to search the entire case collection. However, users are given the option to refine by jurisdiction, court, date and various other filters in the search template.

Search methods

• The default searching method on LawSource is by template, but users can also search using Boolean search syntax or an excellent natural language search engine. Users therefore don't need to understand the Boolean syntax to use many features of the product.
• Quicklaw only offers Boolean searching for creating keyword search queries.
• CanLII uses a template that allows full Boolean searching but also supports some natural language span features such as word stemming and phrase identification.

See the comparison chart of search syntax for Westlaw Canada, Quicklaw and CanLII.

LawSource, Quicklaw and CanLII allow users to easily refine or narrow their searches.

Quicklaw offers tremendous flexibility in sorting and grouping search results. LawSource is more restrictive in this regard. In particular, on LawSource search results cannot be re-sorted after the search is run. Instead, user preferences must be changed before the search is run. CanLII allows users to sort search results by date, relevance and citation frequency. This last option is not available on Quicklaw or LawSource.

Case law

LawSource and Quicklaw

The following table compares the features of LawSource and Quicklaw relevant to searching case law.

CanLII

CanLII contains case law and tribunal decisions from across Canada. Collection development objectives include building a comprehensive case law collection for all Canadian superior courts from the beginning of 2000. This has been accomplished for most jurisdictions and the coverage for many goes further back.

Several administrative tribunals contribute their decisions for publication on CanLII. Current collection development priorities for administrative tribunals are human rights, labour law, and professional discipline, and privacy decisions.

To see a full description of the current scope of coverage, click on the Scope of Coverage link on the CanLII home page.

CanLII permits searching in full text and by citation or title, with refinement by date range and type of document. The Advanced Search page permits customization by jurisdiction, court level and type of tribunal. The Database Search enables users to further customize the databases to be searched. Users can search the whole collection or select a jurisdiction from the home page menu. They can refine their search results using the query box at the beginning of each results list.

Search results can be sorted by relevance, date or citation frequency. The citation frequency ranking method enables the user to quickly identify leading cases in the results list.

CanLEX is a recent feature that allows you to hyperlink your documents to the cases and legislation on CanLII. This is preferable to using the commercial services because once the links are inserted you can access the cases and legislation without incurring any real or notional cost.

Other sources

Other free sources of case law include

• Australasian Legal Information Institute (AUSTLII) for Australian and New Zealand law
• British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) for English, Irish and Scottish law
• Legal Information Institute (LII) for US law
• LexisOne (most recent 5 years of US appellate case law)
• Public Library of Law for US law

Lexis and Westlaw are excellent commercial services for US, UK and European law, but are very expensive.

Legislation

Effective legislative research requires the reader to study and consider a legislative provision in the context of the whole Act, rather than looking at an isolated section. Regulations should be considered as well as the statute. The legislation you review must be current. Effective judicial consideration research often requires that you find out about previous revisions of the legislation. These factors should be considered when choosing your source for legislation.

LawSource and Quicklaw comparison

Analysis of a detailed comparison of the legislation available on LawSource, Quicklaw and CanLII as of September 24, 2009 leads to the following generalizations regarding the legislative research tools available on these services.

• Quicklaw is very current for federal, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario legislation. LawSource is less current than Quicklaw for most jurisdictions.
• LawSource does not contain complete regulations for any jurisdiction, so either Quicklaw or CanLII will be preferable sources for regulations unless the particular regulation you are researching is within the limited selection available on LawSource.
• If your objective is to research all statutes (not regulations) across Canada, this can be done by section on either LawSource or Quicklaw, or by whole Act on CanLII.
• Quicklaw contains much better legislative history information than LawSource, including a reference to the previous revision. It permits point in time research for federal, Alberta, BC and Ontario statutes. This allows the researcher to view all versions of a section from the commencement of point in time coverage, or to request the version in force on a particular date.
• Law Source legislative history information is only for the current revision.
• LawSource permits the user to travel to sequential sections of the legislation using the Next and Previous links. On Quicklaw this is done by searching for the Act by name or citation and then opening up each section in turn from the results list.
• LawSource includes KeyCite, which lists judicial consideration of statutes and includes coverage of rules of court and regulations. KeyCite has full historical coverage spanning earlier legislative revisions.
• Quicklaw has recently expanded QuickCite to include statutes judicially considered, but only for the most recent legislative revision. It includes cases from January 1992 (from 2005 for Quebec) and is not as comprehensive as KeyCite.
• The Rules of Court can be searched on either Quicklaw or LawSource.  However, LawSource has the additional feature of a Rules Concordance, and has added Rules Judicially Considered to KeyCite.

CanLII

CanLII publishes statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions. CanLII's legislative coverage for some provincial jurisdictions is stronger than that offered by the commercial services.

• Most of the provincial legislation databases are updated weekly, and federal legislation is updated bi-weekly. However, currency is dependent on the currency of the government consolidation from which the update is downloaded.
• Users can compare different versions of an Act or regulation in a side-by-side view with changes highlighted. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed to be notified of amendments to specified Acts and regulations, or amendments to all legislation from a jurisdiction.
• Users can search the entire legislation collection or specify which jurisdiction or statute they want to search in. Legislation can also be accessed by browsing alphabetically. Regulations enacted pursuant to a statute are listed with the statute.
• Legislative collections include a reference to the previous revision for most jurisdictions.
• CanLII has built links from statute references in its case collection to the full text of the legislation. It is not possible for CanLII to ensure that the version of the legislation being linked to is the same as the version referred to in the case. These links permit users to find judicial consideration of legislation, but are not comprehensive.

Other sources

BCLaws.ca

BCLaws.ca is a free site operated by the Queen's Printer that publishes a current consolidation of British Columbia statutes and regulations.

QP LegalEze is a legislation site also published by the Queen's Printer, but requires a paid subscription. It has several features that are not included in the free site, such as tables of legislative history and changes, private and local Acts, more sophisticated searching features, and additional content.

Quickscribe

Quickscribe Online makes available to subscribers the 1996 revision with regulations, and includes a number of value-added features to help subscribers navigate through bills, orders-in-council, current and archived versions of BC legislation. Quickscribe includes alert services to notify users of legislative changes. Quickscribe Hardcopy publishes topical consolidations of British Columbia legislation in print.

Free sites

• Access to bills and legislation from across Canada is conveniently listed in Bora Laskin Law Library - Canadian Legislation.
• An excellent source for federal bills is Legisinfo.
• In addition to CanLII, free federal legislation is available through the Department of Justice.

Texts and encyclopedias

LawSource

LawSource contains the full text of the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, both the Western and Ontario editions.

• The CED can be accessed through the LawSource table of contents or through a keyword search.
• References to the CED also appear in the KeyCite results for cases that have been cited in the CED.
• Currency information for each title is included in the table of contents for that title, and currency varies considerably from one title to the next.

Other than the full text articles, no other narrative secondary sources are included in LawSource. However, there are several topical products in the Westlaw Canada family that contain leading secondary sources pertinent to particular areas of law.

Quicklaw

Quicklaw offers a range of subscription options. Halsbury's Laws of Canada is included in a Full Service subscription. This is a work in progress, so many titles are not yet available. Selected titles from Halsbury's, as well as leading Butterworths texts, are included in Essentials subscriptions targeted to different practice areas.

Other sources

There is a vast world of secondary sources available only in print. These should not be overlooked. Often the research process will be more informed, efficient and effective if one of these sources is consulted before electronic research is commenced. See the list of Suggested Textbooks for a place to start. LegalTree also contains a good list of treatises and internet sites organized by subject.

Case digests

LawSource

LawSource includes the Canadian Abridgment case digests.

• The digests can be accessed through a hierarchical table of contents using the Abridgment classification scheme, or by searching the digests using keywords.
• You can select certain classifications from the table of contents and restrict your search to digests within those classifications.
• When viewing a case you can see the Abridgment classifications for the case and then link to all the digests under that classification to find similar cases.

Quicklaw

• The Canada Digest service on Quicklaw is available to Full Service subscribers, and a limited number of titles are included in other subscriptions. The Canada Digests can be searched, or accessed through a hierarchical classification scheme.
• Quicklaw also contains a database called All Canadian Summaries that you can search by keyword. The database contains summaries prepared by Quicklaw editors that also function as case head-notes.
• Quicklaw has created a two level topical classification scheme that can be used from the case search template to restrict your research to a particular topic. The headings can also be used to sort your search results by topic. The classifications are assigned to the cases by running pre-designed queries against each case when it is put into the Quicklaw collection.

Comparison

The Abridgment digests are organized within a detailed classification hierarchy and are integrated with the case law collection and the CED. The recent completion of the 3rd edition of the Abridgment has modernized and improved the classification scheme.

The Quicklaw Canada Digests and the topical classification scheme enable users to search within the Quicklaw case collection by topic. However, each uses a different classification hierarchy. Given the recent introduction of the Canada Digests, a comparison with the Abridgment digests is premature.

Other sources

British Columbia lawyers can subscribe to the Continuing Legal Education Society's Case Digest Connection. A subscription to the archives allows searching on the case digest collection.

Words and phrases

LawSource

LawSource has added a words and phrases feature, based on Carswell's Words and Phrases publication. It is searched from the Words and Phrases template on the Home page. This collection contains terms, with examples of how they have been judicially defined. Users can search for words as defined terms, or for words appearing anywhere in the words and phrases entries. A separate feature in the Legislation template on LawSource allows users to search for terms defined in legislation.

Quicklaw

Quicklaw has added Canadian Legal Words and Phrases to its core Canadian content, under the Commentary tab. This source contains excerpts from cases and tribunal decisions in which words and phrases are judicially defined, and also contains terms defined in Canadian legislation. Coverage for Canadian case law starts from January 2000. The collection includes United Kingdom and Commonwealth entries, and legal maxims. Users can search for words as defined terms, or for words appearing anywhere in the words and phrases entries.

Comparison

Searches of terms such as "bonus", "accessory use", "treaty", and "best efforts" on both services revealed that LawSource has a superior tool for words and phrases research. The LawSource searches produced many more results, and in particular many more Canadian cases, than the Quicklaw searches. LawSource also provided easy access to related terms. Quicklaw users should augment their words and phrases research with print resources.

Case citators

KeyCite and QuickCite

QuickCite is the case citator on Quicklaw, and KeyCite is the case citator on LawSource. KeyCite tends to add citing cases sooner than QuickCite, but the treatment code is not assigned when the citing case is first added to KeyCite.

The following table sets out the key differences between KeyCite and QuickCite. For more detailed coverage of these distinctions, including the treatment codes used by each citator, see Make Your Research Current - Case Citators.

RefLex on CanLII

CanLII builds links between cases using its Reflex database. The Reflex database is based on neutral citations, the CanLII citation, and reporter citations from 1985 for cases published in several commonly-used case reporters. The Reflex database enables users to search on CanLII by citation, to note up cases, and to rank cases by frequency of citation. This citator does not assign treatment codes.

Statute citators

LawSource

LawSource contains an electronic version of Canadian Statutes Citations, called KeyCite.

• Judicial consideration of a statute section can be retrieved by typing in the citation for the section on the home page of LawSource, or by clicking on the Citing References link when viewing the statute section.
• The report is organized by subsection, first listing cases considering the section as a whole, and then listing judicial consideration by subsection.
• KeyCite includes judicial consideration for older statute revisions, not just for the revision currently published on LawSource.
• KeyCite covers judicial consideration of rules of court and regulations (from 1997).
• Testing in respect of British Columbia judgments indicated a time lag of 3-6 weeks before British Columbia cases were included in KeyCite results for statutes judicially considered.

Quicklaw

Quicklaw has introduced its own statute citator. QuickCite lists cases from 1992 (for Quebec from 2005) that judicially consider the most recent revision of each jurisdiction's legislation. In order to look for judicial consideration of statutes on Quicklaw beyond this scope it is necessary to search in the full text case law for distinctive terms from the name of the statute in conjunction with the section number. Because of the time lag between when cases are released and when they are processed for inclusion in the statute citators, it is necessary to conduct this type of keyword search in either product in order to be completely current.

The most efficient use of the electronic statute citators is in conjunction with a publication such as Statutes of British Columbia Judicially Considered, which provides a summary of the most important citing cases. Another good way to augment your statute citator research is to consult an annotated version of the legislation you are researching.

CanLII

CanLII is rebuilding its statute collection and when completed it will enable links between individual statute sections and cases referring to the section. Some links are currently available between legislation and cases citing that legislation. However, these links should not be considered comprehensive and other sources should be consulted to complete your research regarding judicial consideration of the legislation.

Journals

LawSource

LawSource includes the Index to Canadian Legal Literature, as well as a collection of full-text journal articles and the case comments from the Carswell topical reporters.

• This material has been integrated with KeyCite, so that a case citator report lists full-text articles on LawSource where the case is referred to, and also includes references to ICLL entries where the case is the subject of a case comment.
• A search of the full text journal collection on LawSource is more expensive than a search through the case law, at a notional cost of $40 per search. This search will cover the full text journals, the topical reporter case comments, and the ICLL.
• LawSource is adding entries for journal articles from other jurisdictions to the KeyCite results, although so far this represents a limited subset of the large collection of full text articles in the international library. These articles are outside of the flat-rate subscription, so you will incur an additional fee to view them and print them.

Quicklaw

Quicklaw Full Service includes

• a collection of Canadian full-text journal articles
• the Index to Canadian Legal Literature
• the Canadian Law Symposia Index
• full text access to international journals in the LexisNexis collection.

This material is not integrated into QuickCite. However, links to the full text articles on Quicklaw are being incorporated into the ICLL database and the case law databases.

Netletters and other current awareness publications on Quicklaw can also be a useful source of commentary. They are included in the global commentary database, and are also part of the topical databases in Quicklaw.

Comparison

There are some differences between the selection of journals available in full text on each of Quicklaw and LawSource, and the range of coverage for these journals.

• Quicklaw has a more comprehensive Canadian journals collection, and includes the international collection within the core subscription
• coverage for journals included in both services tends to start earlier in Quicklaw
• a determination of which service is more appropriate will also depend on the topic being researched.

Other sources

• There is a wealth of full text journal material available through Lexis and Westlaw in their full-text journal databases. Each of these services also carries legal periodical indexes that cover over 750 publications.
• Hein Online and LegalTrac are available free of charge to in-library users at Courthouse Libraries BC. Hein Online is a collection of full-text legal articles and LegalTrac is a periodicals index equivalent to the legal periodicals indices on Lexis and Westlaw. These services are also available to library users at the UBC law library.
• The University of Toronto Law Library publishes a useful directory of electronic sources for law journals. If you are unsure where a journal is published electronically this is likely to be the most efficient way to find out where you can get it.
• Some important journals, such as the Canadian Bar Review and The Advocate, are not available in full text through any of the commercial services. Articles from the Canadian Bar Review since 1923 are available to Canadian Bar Association members at cba.org in the publications section. There is a rudimentary search engine and they are indexed by subject. Canadian Bar Review articles are also indexed in the Index to Canadian Legal Literature and the Canadian Index to Legal Periodicals. An electronic index to The Advocate and to CBA section papers is published in the BC Legal Literature Index maintained by Courthouse Libraries BC.
• CLE seminar papers from the BC Continuing Legal Education Society are available with a subscription through CLE Online.

Current awareness

LawSource

LawSource subscribers are entitled, at no extra cost, to receive digests of recent cases in various areas of law. Current areas are Aboriginal, Administrative, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, Business Associations, Commercial, Constitutional, Damages, Employment, Estates and Trusts, Family, Impaired Driving, Insurance, Labour, Practice, Real Property, Torts, and Young Offenders. Subscribers can link from the digest to the full text, but will incur the notional cost of $3.50 for linking to a case.

LawSource also provides free access to recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions.

Quicklaw

Quicklaw provides an extensive current awareness service in various practice areas through its family of NetLetters. A NetLetter is a summary of recent cases in a specific area of the law. Quicklaw also posts recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions in its Supreme Court of Canada Service, and makes digests of significant recent decisions available without charge through the LAWNET Legal Update Service (RSS feed available).

CanLII

CanLII has introduced RSS feeds for superior court decisions, allowing users to receive all decisions from particular courts through their RSS reader. CanLII has also introduced RSS feeds for legislative amendments.

Other sources

Some Queen's Printers and Quickscribe have introduced RSS feeds for notification of new legislation and amendments.

The BC Superior Courts website permits easy access to judgments released during the current week, and many lawyers make a habit of checking the site each week to keep up on the most current cases. Summaries of recent Court of Appeal judgments are available from the court.

The CLE Society of British Columbia publishes case digests for British Columbia cases weekly in electronic format, available by subscription. Each digest links to the full text of the case from the court website. The CLE home page contains free current information of interest to lawyers, including some recent CLE papers, and can be customized by practice area.

Canada Law Book has a Case Alert service for subscribers to notify them of recent cases in the following topical areas: Aboriginal, Bankruptcy & Insolvency, Civil Litigation, Corporate & Commercial, Criminal, Employment, Family, Immigration, Insurance, Intellectual Property, Labour, Municipal & Planning, Real Property, and Wills Estates & Trusts. Users can link to a full text version of the case.

Conclusions

LawSource and Quicklaw

With respect to LawSource and Quicklaw, it is impossible to conclude that one is vastly superior to the other, or to advise users to subscribe to one rather than the other. Each service has strengths and weaknesses, and these should be taken into account in deciding which service to use for discrete tasks. If you intend to subscribe to only one service, then you must consider which research tasks are most important to you and evaluate how well that service does the task and at what cost.

• LawSource is more full-featured, with better integration of primary and secondary sources, more value-added features, and more searching options. Quicklaw is much stronger in its coverage of administrative tribunals. With some exceptions, Quicklaw is also stronger for statutory research. Its journal collection and current awareness collection are superior.
• The Abridgment case digests and the CED on LawSource are paralleled by the Canada Digests and Halsbury's Laws of England on the Quicklaw Full Service subscription. Given the recent introduction of these tools on Quicklaw, it is too early to make a comparison.
• The case citators on LawSource and Quicklaw are both good, but each is designed quite differently and users are likely to develop a preference for one over the other. The LawSource statute citator has superior coverage.
• The words and phrases collections on LawSource and Quicklaw contain very different entries, and it will often be beneficial to check both. At present, the LawSource offering has a larger collection of Canadian content.
• With the shift of Quicklaw to transaction-based pricing, there is less difference between Quicklaw and LawSource in notional pricing. As a general rule, searches on LawSource have a lower notional cost, but linking to cases and noting up cases on Quicklaw has a lower notional cost. Some of these cost issues can be addressed by using CanLII in conjunction with the commercial services.

CanLII

CanLII is not comprehensive enough to be your sole source for case law or statute research. Its case and statute citators are incomplete. However, it is an excellent source for free access to current legislation and to case law from 2000, with earlier case law coverage for several courts. It is funded and owned by the Canadian legal profession.

• Because there is no charge for using it, lawyers are likely to try more different search queries and spend more time reading cases and legislation online.
• CanLII is designed for ease of use, with a simple interface and an excellent search engine that accommodates both sophisticated Boolean searches and more natural searching.
• In taxation hearings, disbursements for obtaining cases from commercial services have been disallowed where the documents were available from free services such as CanLII and court websites.
• CanLII features such as RSS feeds for legislation, using Reflex to generate a document with links to cases on CanLII, and the ability to compare versions of legislation, make CanLII not only a less expensive alternative but also a superior alternative for some tasks.

References

Best, CanLII Features

Best, Guidelines for Computer Research

Best, Search Syntax for Canadian Legal Databases

Best, Search Syntax for Free Internet Legal Sites