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Law: Finding British cases with LexisNexis Academic and WorldLII.org

How to find international cases with LexisNexis Academic when you have a citation

LexisNexis Academic search screenshot

The trick to advanced searching in LexisNexis is the "Search by Content Type" button in the upper right. Clicking this button will reveal a menu of different News, Legal, Company, and People search types within LexisNexis.

 

LexisNexis Academic search drop down screenshot

The International Legal section has three options: Canadian Cases, Canadian Legislation, and EU, Commonwealth, and Other Nations. British cases are in the EU, Commonwealth, and Other Nations section.

 

LexisNexis Academic EU & Commonwealth search screenshot

Enter your search terms or case name. Make sure to choose the correct jurisdiction (UK Cases, Combined) in the Source box.

 

LexisNexis Academic search results screenshot

Scroll through the search results until you find the correct case. The case you're searching for will probably be the oldest case in the list, which may put it at the end of the list.

 

LexisNexis Academic British case screenshot

Clicking on the case name will give you the full text. Note that LexisNexis Academic does not include as many features (like Shepardizing or headnotes) for non-US cases.

How to find international cases with WorldLII.org when you have a citation

World Legal Information Institute (LII) search screen

The search interface for WorldLII is fairly straightfoward--enter your keywords into the search box. When searching for cases, you can limit by jurisdiction in the "Advanced Search."

 

World Legal Information Institute (LII) search results

Because WorldLII draws from multiple sources, you may have duplicate search results. And because the owners of the source documents often move them, some of the links may be broken.

World Legal Information Institute (LII) case

Try the links until you find one that opens a copy of your case.