Tutorial for FMSC 487 -- Legal Aspects of Family Problems  

Where to begin:

This tutorial is designed to assist you with assignments in your family law class.  You may use the Westlaw Campus Research database or the Lexis Nexis Academic database for legal research.  For examples in this tutorial, we will use the "user-friendly" Westlaw, but in many instances Lexis Nexis would have functioned similarly.

Important note:  With either of these databases, be sure that you are searching legal data, rather than general news information.  If you are using Westlaw, be sure to click on the "Law" tab at the top left of the screen.  If in Lexis Nexis use the "Look Up a Legal Case" template or click on the tab for "U.S. Legal."

Both of these databases have good "Help" functions.  If you have a question about how to compose a search, about the definition of a term, etc., try hitting the "Help" tab on the respective database.  It likely will give you the information that you need.