Lexis Advance®

Lexis Advance is a portal that allows users to connect to a large remote computer-assisted legal research database online. This database has been grown since as early as 1970, which makes it one of the most massive around. As a result, those who need to look through a wide variety of legal and journalistic resources will appreciate the information that it holds.

In spite of the fact that it's got more raw unstructured data than nearly any other source that most legal experts are likely to come into contact with, Lexis Advance is surprisingly easy to use. While the individual storage containers might not be organized according to any particular structure, everything is tagged to make things easy to find. A clean user interface makes it even easier for those who need to do some serious CALR work to process requests through Lexis Advance.

Unfortunately, the legal research field has long been wracked by political problems and over time some documents have had to be removed or restructured in the database. This means that the stored information has changed to at least some degree over time. The fact that you can tag favorite stored resources, however, makes it much easier to go back and find something later. This should help to assuage concerns over this kind of issue.

Best of all, Lexis Advance has information stored about nearly every segment of the market that one could possibly think of. It's database includes news stories, court documents, law best practices lists and even the output of certain market intelligence tools. A few of these tools are accessible to those who are interested in conducting their own studies, but it's likely that an overwhelming majority of those who use the software will prefer to simply look over the projected results and draw their own conclusions accordingly.

A variety of law practice management tools also come bundled with the package, which might be of some use to those who are starting to manage their own operations. Individual attorneys will of course be liable for their own use of the program, but it can certainly be helpful to those who currently lack any method keeping track of case information. Nevertheless, it's likely that law students will be among those who most readily turn to the software.

Considering the fact that the existing legal database stretches back so far, students shouldn't have any difficulty finding the details on nearly anything that they might be currently doing a project on. Lexis Advance can't completely automate the research process, but it can come fairly close. That's especially good news for those who have to complete things based around a certain deadline and can't wait around for a human research consultant to send them over copies of a specific legal document.

Pros

• Simple to use
• Clean UI
• Massive number of case files

Cons

• Articles not available on all academic topics
• Some sources may be withdrawn