Prepare to Practice Resources

You should check for headnotes on the key points of law from the opinion to see if other cases cite the case on that specific point of law. You can then use topics and key numbers to find similar cases by clicking on the link provided and adjusting the jurisdiction as necessary. You can also search or browse by these topics and key numbers. You'll likely want to try this if you aren't finding relevant cases.

Each headnote contains not only a summary of a key point of law within an opinion but also an associated topic & key number. The headnote summaries can help you identify the parts of an opinion that are the most pertinent to your fact pattern. This allows you to quickly access the information you need in an opinion. Once you have identified a pertinent headnote, clicking on the headnote number will jump you to that point in the opinion. Below is an example of Westlaw's headnotes.

While headnotes help you quickly navigate to information with an opinion, topics and key numbers can help you find more relevant cases on a point of law, as well as help you easily locate opinions from other jurisdictions. Clicking on the link to the left of the key icon or at the bottom of the list view at the left of the headnote will bring you to a list of opinions that share the topic and key number in your currently selected jurisdiction. At the top of the list, you will see the current jurisdiction and can change it by clicking on the change link and choosing a different jurisdiction. Topics and key number are consistent throughout Westlaw publications, making it very efficient to follow your point of law through many resources.

Using the previous example and selecting the key number for the first headnote pulls up the example below. 

Using topic and key number for print research relies on digests, jurisdiction-specific sets that are arranged alphabetically by topic, from abandoned and lost property to zoning and planning. Digests are incredibly expensive to acquire and maintain - the current purchase price for a new copy of the Alabama digest is a little over 30k - and so you aren't likely to encounter these in most law firms. You can, however, browse by topic and key number simply by clicking on the topics and key numbers link on the Westlaw homepage. 

This can be useful because there is a logical order to the arrangement of key numbers under each topic. By browsing through these you can quickly gain an overview of the topic, picking out important issues and then scanning the headnotes under each specific key number to gain a more detailed understanding of the legal issues that might be relevant to your research, almost like reading a mini-treatise. 

By browsing through these you can quickly gain an overview of the topic, picking out important issues and then scanning the headnotes under each specific key number to gain more detailed understanding of the legal issues that might be relevant to you research.