How do I find cases?

Law reports and transcripts of judgments are available in all the key legal databases: vLex Justis, LexisLibrary and Westlaw.

If you are looking for a case and your citation refers to a specific series of law reports (e.g. ‘All England Law Reports’) you can find out whether the report series is available in the Online Library by looking up the report series title in the A-Z journals list. If the report series is available in the Library, the A-Z journals list will tell you which database(s) the report is available in, and the years available in each database. You can then link across to the appropriate database from the A-Z journals list. If your citation abbreviates the name of the report series you can find out the full title using the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.

The vLex Justis database is a useful starting point when searching for reports of a particular case, or cases relating to a particular topic. JustisOne will tell you where a case has been reported, and allow you to link across to the full-text of reports when they are available in one of the other legal databases. JustisOne also shows you how cases relate to each other, and to legislation.

You can also search for cases directly in vLex Justis, LexisLibrary and Westlaw. Each database page has a Quick Start Guide that explains how to search it.