Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Introducing Nexis Uni

LexisNexis Academic, the campus-wide version of the Law School's Lexis Advance platform, will be retired at the end of the year. In preparation, the Duke University Libraries have already switched over to the new campus-wide Lexis platform, dubbed Nexis Uni. Links on the Law Library website and research guides have been changed to this new platform.

Nexis Uni contains case law from the federal courts and all 50 states, as well as current statutory and regulatory codes, law reviews and journals, news resources, and company information. The easiest way to view available materials is by the link to Menu > All Sources in the top left corner, although the home page's search builder and the Advanced Search feature will help format a search across Nexis Uni.

A key resource in Nexis Uni for campus legal researchers is the encyclopedia American Jurisprudence 2d, a helpful starting place for unfamiliar legal topics (also available in print in the Law Library’s Reference collection). The Shepard's citation search feature, which was previously limited to only case law in LexisNexis Academic, has expanded: Nexis Uni users can now Shepardize citations to case law, statutes, court rules, regulations, and law review articles. The Shepard’s shortcut shep:[citation] in the main search box (e.g., shep: 58 Duke L.J. 1791) works in Nexis Uni as well as Lexis Advance.

One important note for Law School users of either platform: if you attempt to access both law school Lexis Advance and campus-wide Nexis Uni during a single browser session, your browser will most likely point you to whichever version of Lexis that you accessed first. (That is, if you log into your law school Lexis account and later click a link to Nexis Uni during the same browser session, you'll see…law school Lexis instead of Nexis Uni, and vice versa if you accessed Nexis Uni first.) Closing your browser completely should allow you to access the second platform without difficulty.

For help with using the new campus-wide LexisNexis interface, or with any other legal research questions, be sure to Ask a Librarian.