Research Guides: GDipICL: Library Resources: CanLII, Westlaw & Lexis

William R. Lederman Law Library

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William R. Lederman Law Library
128 Union Street Kingston, Ontario
Canada, K7L 2P1

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The 3 Major Legal Research Services

There are three major online legal research services in Canada: CanLII, Westlaw, and Lexis. These are platforms that allow you to search, locate, and read legal information including case law, legislation, and commentary. This page provides information on how to access all three of these services.

CanLII

CanLII is a free legal research service that is funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.

You do not need to set up an account to use CanLII, but you may want to sign up for a free myCanLII account, which allows you to use additional functionality like saving documents to a folder and creating personalized alerts.

Note: The Law Library has a suite of CanLII training videos available to students at Queen's Law. These are also linked from your course materials in ICL 810. Please note that you must sign in with your NetID to view these videos.

Set up your free Westlaw account

Westlaw is a commercial legal research service that is commonly used in professional legal workplaces. To activate your free student account, you need to receive a registration key from the company.

Your Queen's email account should receive a welcome email from Westlaw (under the name Thomson Reuters) during your orientation week. This email will have instructions for setting up your personal account.

Check your spam folder and contact the law library for help if you can't find the welcome email.

Note: Each time you sign in, Westlaw prompts you to “Select a client ID.” The Client ID is used to track your search history, but otherwise has no effect. Simply enter any text or number and then “Start a new session” to proceed to the homepage.

Training: Westlaw provides many resources for learning how to use their research service. See their Product Training page for a full selection of videos and other resources.

Set up your free Lexis account

Lexis is a commercial legal research service that is that is commonly used in professional legal workplaces. Register for a free student account via the online Law School Portal. Select "Register for Access" and follow the instructions to create an account using your Queen's email address.

The registration options do not include the GDipICL program specifically. If you are a full-time student, select "Graduate (LLM)" and then enter your start and graduation years. If you are a part-time student, select the 3-year option.

Training: Lexis provides a variety of training materials for learning how to use their research service. See their Training Resources for Lexis+ Canada page for a full selection of videos and other resources.