Lexis Web

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Lexis Web is the new legal search engine offered by LexisNexis. The product is in beta and currently free. According to the user guide (PDF), the “Lexis Web product includes important, legal-oriented Web content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff. You can trust that all content has met LexisNexis criteria for being authoritative and accurate.” The goal is produce only relevant results.

The interface is clean and the results page easy to navigate. Lexis Web also offers options to refine a search. The bar on the left side of the screen lists options to reduce the number of results. The researcher can narrow by legal topic, key terms, referenced citations, or geographic area. Detailed instructions are available in the user guide (PDF).

A common search I run when testing a search engine is “electronic discovery” and “spoliation,” purposely misspelling it as “spoilation.” Lexis Web recognized my error, and provided me with the commonly seen “did you mean?” link. Executing the search produced around 1000 hits. Reviewing the first few pages of results, I found them to be from recognizable sources and on point. I then took advantage of the “narrow by citation” and limited the results to, as an example, items pertaining to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26. The number of results was then reduced to 26 relevant sites.

This engine is a nice option for legal researchers who want relevant results from proven websites. For those with a Lexis account, the site also suggests specific Lexis databases to run additional searches.