A citator is a research tool that allows the tax researcher to both determine the history of a case and evaluate the strength of its holdings. A citator may also facilitate locating cases more on point with the client's facts.

What does a Citator do?

What are citators? A citator is a tool that will provide you a list of everything that has ever cited your document. These are called citing references. This will generally include not only all cases and statutes that have cited your document, but also every legal secondary source, court documents, and regulations.

What is an advantage to using an index search to find documents of interest?

What is an advantage to using an index search to find documents of interest? An index search benefits from the creation of the index which requires the tax meaning and context of the words to be considered.

Which is an online source that may be used to determine if a case is still good law?

Overview. There are two main case law citators to verify the status of your case - on LexisNexis, it is Shepards and on Westlaw it is Keycite. Keyciting and Shepardizing are also a method for finding other cases and secondary sources relevant to your topic.

What source would you use to see how a case has been treated in subsequent case law?

LexisNexis(R) | Research Help. The citation signal appearing next to a case name indicates whether the decision has received positive, negative, cautionary or neutral treatment in subsequent judgments.

3.12 Role Of A Researcher

26 related questions found

What is case law used for?

Federal Court System

Most of the cases heard are appeals from lower courts and cases from state supreme courts which involve a point of federal law. The court has discretion to decide which cases it will consider. Made up of appellate courts which deal with appeals from the district courts in their circuit.

Why would a practitioner need a tax service when most primary tax sources are available for free on the Internet?

Why do tax practitioners use a commercial tax service when most primary sources are available for free on the Internet? -Commercial tax services provide editorial explanations and expert analysis of primary tax law. ... -Tax services facilitate more efficient, effective, and comprehensive searches.

Which of the following might be considered a primary source?

Primary sources are original materials, regardless of format. Letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, and sound or video recordings are examples of primary sources created as a time or event is occurring.

When should you use a citator?

Citators are used for a number of reasons. One reason is to find a case or statute's direct history. With cases, one can find prior and subsequent history. With statutes, one can find whether the statute was amended or if there is pending legislation, for example.

What is a citator service?

At its core, a citator is an index of legal materials. With a citator service, a legal researcher can generate a list of materials that cite to a specific source or document. The two primary legal citators are KeyCite (Westlaw) and Shepard's (Lexis).

What is a citator symbol?

Citator Symbols

Both Shepard's (Lexis) and KeyCite (West) rely on similar (though not identical) sets of symbols to indicate the status of cases. These symbols are called signals in Shepard's, flags in KeyCite and indicators in BCite. ... West: a red symbol indicates the case is bad law on at least one point of law.

Why would you Shepardize a case?

What is "Shepardizing"? One significant purpose of Shepardizing is to verify that a case is still "good law." The overall action of Shepardizing is to use a citator to see the other cases that have cited a case and their treatment of that case.

What does it mean to Shepardize a legal case?

The verb Shepardizing (sometimes written lower-case) refers to the process of consulting Shepard's to see if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or cited by later cases.

Why is a primary source useful?

Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events. Because primary sources are incomplete snippets of history, each one represents a mystery that students can only explore further by finding new pieces of evidence.

What are the benefits of using primary sources?

Primary sources help students develop knowledge, skills, and analytical abilities. When dealing directly with primary sources, students engage in asking questions, thinking critically, making intelligent inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues in the past and present.

Is research a secondary source?

Secondary sources can include books, journal articles, speeches, reviews, research reports, and more. Generally speaking, secondary sources are written well after the events that are being researched.

Which of the following is an administrative source of the federal tax law issued by the IRS?

The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorized the imposition of a Federal income tax. Statutory sources of Federal tax law come out of the legislative branch of the U.S. government. Circuit Courts are administrative sources of the Federal tax law.

Why is case law important for your research?

Legislation makes laws. Case law provides guidance on how the laws should be interpreted. As you can see, using case law to support your case can help the judge understand how to interpret the law in your favour. ... When you are representing yourself in court, this kind of legal research is very important.

Why is it important to understand case law?

Case law, like legislation, can change over time. Just because a decision was good law once does not mean it remains so today. A lawyer needs to be able not only to find and read case law, but also to be able to check whether it has been subject to subsequent judicial consideration and whether it remains good law.

What is the importance of legal research?

Legal Research is a process designed to help you check for legal precedents, and it can be used to find answers for various legal questions. It's very important to do Legal Research if you want to figure out if a legal issue has any precedent or not.

Does Google Scholar Shepardize?

Free case law searches, such as Google Scholar and Ravel, often have ways to at least look at other cases that have cited to the case you are trying to Shepardize, but this will not identify cases that may be overruled by implication or find cases on the same issue that are conflicting but do not cite each other.

How do you use Shepardize?

How do I "shepardize" a case when I know the citation?

1. The most common method is to enter "shep:" in the search box, followed by your citation, then press ENTER or click the search button; or.
2. Enter just the citation name in the search box, then click the Shepard's Signal™ indicator next to the document name; or.

What style should I cite my sources?

There are (3) major citation styles used in academic writing:

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Chicago, which supports two styles: Notes and Bibliography. Author-Date.

What is the main reason to use Shepard's Citators?

Shepard's Citators are reference works that list cases and other sources that mention or cite your case/authority. They provide references or citations from later cases/authorities (citing) to earlier cases/authorities (cited).