Viewpoint
LexisNexis is the “Most Accurate and Reliable Source”
of California Supreme and Appellate Courts Cases.
State Reporter of Decisions Tells Why.
by Edward Jessen · Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of California
T
alking about the relative advantages
and disadvantages of Westlaw®
and LexisNexis® is, I’ve found, akin
to talking about the relative advantages
and disadvantages of the Republican
and Democratic political parties, or the
Lutheran and Episcopal Churches. People
use what they like and like what they
use, so it is hard to objectively discuss
the advantages and disadvantages of the
major online services.
LexisNexis has, over the last five years,
become the predominant favorite for
online legal research in California. But
a large percentage of California legal
researchers, including appellate court
attorneys and staff, prefer Westlaw. Many
use both, picking one or the other for a
particular research task, depending on
the functionality or attributes that are
required for a particular task. Personally,
I predominantly use LexisNexis, but there
are many research tasks for which I favor
Westlaw.
The most important statement I make
is that both services are reputable and
reliable; realistically, researchers will
never come to a different substantive
conclusion on an issue by using one
service as compared to the other.
With regard to California Supreme Court
and published Court of Appeal opinions,
and particularly recently filed opinions
(i.e., filed within the last 15 months
or so), LexisNexis is a more accurate,
authentic, up-to-date, and reliable source
for citing and quoting.
LexisNexis is, by state contract, the
Official Reports print publisher, but is
also the publisher of the official online
version of opinions on the LexisNexis
services, and has very significant
responsibilities to conform to various
contract requirements relating to
authenticity, integrity, and accuracy. It
is also obligated to work closely with
this office in checking, verifying, and
enhancing opinions for publication, and
has developed procedures under which
it responds with overnight updates to
lexis.com® for any editorial directions
we give. The versions of opinions as
edited for the Official Reports advance
pamphlets, including citations and point
pages, must appear on lexis.com about
a week before the advance pamphlets in
which opinions appear are published.
What this means is that when we call
chambers with a problem, or vice versa,
during the period for prepublication
editing for the Official Reports advance
pamphlets, those changes are made
overnight on lexis.com. And the overall
editing, styling, and enhancing for
the Official Reports, including countless
corrections of cites and quotes that
can be resolved without bothering
chambers, appear on lexis.com at least
a week before printing. Notably, this
means that official citations for recently
filed opinions are available on the lexis.
com service months—literally—before
you will find Official Reports citations on
the Westlaw version of opinions, and you
may never find on the Westlaw version of
opinions, the countless other cite, quote,
and clerical corrections made for Official
Reports publication.
The appellate court system in California,
and particularly this office, can only fully
support one opinion publisher, and by
virtue of the Official Reports publication
contract, that publisher has been
LexisNexis for the last seven years. We
have a limited ability to pass along to
West® very significant changes that arise
in the prepublication editing process for
the advance pamphlets, and the West
editors do sometimes raise queries with
this office based on something they come
across in headnoting and otherwise
preparing California opinions for print or
Westlaw publication.
“… official citations for
recently filed opinions are
available on the lexis.com®
service months—literally—
before you will find Official
Reports citations on the
Westlaw version of opinions,
and you may never find
on Westlaw’s versions of
opinions the countless other
cite, quote, and clerical
corrections ...”
—Edward Jessen
Viewpoint
But as a matter of policy, West waits
until we send it a copy of the final
bound-volume manuscript that was
generated for the Official Reports before
partially updating and correcting its
versions of opinions to conform with the
Official Reports. Our final bound-volume
manuscript is not generated and made
final for about 15 months after advance
pamphlet publication. And I use the term
“partially update” because West has a
corporate editing style for the National
Reporter System that is not particularly
consistent with the California Official
Reports, and its corporate editing styles
will trump reconciling to the Official
Reports.
Meanwhile, the authentic, accurate,
official, and most up-to-date computer
versions of California opinions will have
been available on lexis.com for up to
15 months. Sure, the difference is
perhaps only (or mostly) in the details,
but the anecdote I recall is when the
California Supreme Court filed Sandoval
(41 Cal. 4th 825) and Black II (41 Cal. 4th
799). There were many opinions pending
in the Courts of Appeal waiting for those
opinions before, in turn, the Courts of
Appeal could file their opinions. So I got
50 or more “how to cite” Sandoval and
Black inquiries the first couple of weeks
after those opinions were filed, and many
came with excerpts of what was going
to be cited and quoted in the Court of
Appeal’s opinion. Where Westlaw was
the source, the corporate editing was
palpable and the result was significantly
different in styling from what the Supreme
Court filed, and from what was published
in the Official Reports, not to mention a
couple of minor clerical corrections made
by the author that added clarity to some
key passages in Sandoval and Black II.
As a practical matter, if Westlaw is used
in the research and opinion drafting
process, and if many of the cases being
cited are recent, it adds to the cite and
quote checking burden in chambers, or
later in this office and at the publisher,
to correct those cites and quotes from
how they were rendered on Westlaw
to the authentic and correct versions
on lexis.com and in the Official Reports
advance pamphlets.
Finally, the opinions pamphlets of the
legal tabloids are, as is the case with
newspapers in general, in decline and not
as viable as was once the case. For very
recent opinions with no Official Reports
citation, the citation style we use (i.e.,
with full filing date and docket number,
followed by the “___ Cal. App. 4th ___”)
provides enough information—primarily
by the docket number—for readers of
your opinion to find it on lexis.com or
Westlaw or any number of Web sources.
We do lightly recommend using
LexisNexis as a citation in brackets for
recently filed California opinions so
that users are, in a sense, pointed or
directed to the source that will first have
the Official Reports citation and reflect
all the editing, changes, corrections,
and enhancements made for official
publication. But whatever source you
cite in that regard (i.e., Westlaw or the
local legal tabloids, or none at all) would
not be altered for publication, which is
why you will find many “WL” cites in the
Official Reports. In the end, what you use and cite is left
to author discretion and not altered as
to source—only corrected and styled as
appropriate.
For More Information
Visit www.lexisnexis.com/CAOfficialReports
“Where Westlaw was
the source, the corporate
editing was palpable and
the result was significantly
different in styling from
what the Supreme Court
filed, and from what was
Also Available
published in the Official
on CD-ROM ...
Reports, not to mention a
couple of minor clerical
corrections made by the
author ...”
—Edward Jessen
About Edward Jessen
The author of this Viewpoint has more than
35 years of experience in legal publishing,
the last 19 as the Reporter of Decisions for
the California Supreme Court and Courts
of Appeal, presiding over the reporting
of more than 200 volumes of California’s
appellate decisional law. He is also the
content manager for the appellate courts’
Web site, which provides access to about
12,000 opinions per year. In 2000, Mr.
Jessen authored the fourth edition of the
California Style Manual, the style guide used
by appellate courts and for publication of
the Official Report.
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