In addition to just plainly using the search bar on commercial legal databases, you should take note of some of the features each database has which can help you refine your research within each database. Here is a list of features and tips for Lexis and Westlaw that can help you research housing law:

Westlaw:

Practice Areas

• From the Westlaw homepage, select the 'Practice Areas' tab.
• Practice areas that may be relevant include but are not limited to economic justice, elder law, property law, landlord/tenant law. 
• When you click on a practice area, you can search within it.
  • For example, selecting "Housing Discrimination Law" and then using the search bar to search for the term 'housing choice voucher' will bring up cases. statutes and secondary sources within that database that specifically include the exact phrase housing choice voucher. 
• You can also select resource types just after selecting a practice area if you are sure of what type of document you'd like to retrieve. 

Advanced Search

• Use connectors and commands to add precision to your searching. Some examples include:
  • /p will retrieve results where two identified words appear in the same paragraph. 
  • % will exclude certain words from your results.
  • & will retrieve results where two words appear anywhere in the document. 
• These are not the only connectors available. You can view more by clicking "Search Tips" next to the search bar in Lexis.
• You can combine connectors, too. For example:
  • "housing choice" OR "section 8 voucher" /p student! AND school! % employ! 
    • This string would retrieve results where either the phrase housing choice or the phrase section 8 voucher appears within the same paragraph as the root words student and school, and in which the terms employer, employee, employed, and employment do not appear. 

Content Types

• You can browse materials based on content type by selecting the "content types" tab from the Westlaw homepage. Here, you can  select from cases, secondary sources, and other types.
• One useful content type selection is "Topics & Key Numbers."
  • When you select this content type, you are brought to list of broad topics.
  • One example is "Education". When you click on Education, you can choose from a list to narrow further. 

Lexis:

Practice Areas

• From the Lexis or Lexis+ homepage, select the "Practice Area" tab
• Practice areas that may be relevant are housing discrimination law, family law, and elder law.
• When you click on a practice area, you can search within that area or select a resource type (much like you can with Westlaw)
• You can also select more specific case or statute topics. For example, the family law practice area provides case selections in topics like:
  • due process;
  • education;
  • employment; 
  • and equal protection.

Advanced Search

• Use connectors and commands to add precision to your searching. Some examples include:
  • Quotes (" ") will retrieve documents which  contain an exact phrase. 
  • AND (or &) will retrieve documents with 2 or more identified words anywhere in the document.
  • ! will retrieve word variation of an identified root.
• There are more connectors you can find by selecting advanced search in Lexis and viewing the help materials on connectors and advanced searching.
• You can mix and match connectors, too. For example:
  • "housing discrimination" AND child! 
    • This will retrieve materials that contain the phrase 'housing discrimination" and the words child, children, and/or childhood somewhere else in the document. 

Content Pages

• You might want to simply browse particular types of content such as legal news or treatises. You can do some by selecting the Content tab on the Lexis homepage. 
  • For one example, selecting 'legal news" provides sources by publisher, by state, or by practice area.

What does "peer reviewed" mean?

A peer-reviewed periodical publication is one in which articles go through an official editorial process that involves review and approval by the author's peers (people who are experts in the same subject area). Some (but not all) scholarly publications are peer reviewed in our field. Some trade publications are peer reviewed. 

Note: A periodical is a type of publication that is issued at regularly recurring intervals; for example, a magazine or journal.

There are a number of strategies to help you find quality law journal and law review articles on the topics within the field/s of housing law. We recommend searching both full-text databases and non-full text resources - such as indexes - for finding these articles. 

If you wish to research what your colleagues in the profession are writing about in draft or pre-publication format, check open-access repositories like SSRN. 

We also recommend using Google Scholar to pull articles and other materials on your topic from a wide variety of publications and internet sources, including from UNM databases as well as open access materials. 

For details on researching law review and journal articles, see our Research Guide on Finding Journal Articles, as well as the embedded video on the same topic, above. 

Regarding specific search suggestions, you may wish to try using Legal Source--a database providing indexing and full-text coverage of well-respected scholarly journals. This database is located in the UNMSOL library's A-Z database list.

Here is an example of a search string you might want to try in Legal Source:

• If searching for the subject "family homelessness" navigate to legal source and click boxes: "apply related words," "apply equivalent subjects, 
• In the search box at top type: ("family homeless!" OR family /s unhous!) /5 child! /p school!  and click "search" 
• This would retrieve results that contain either the phrase "family homeless" or variants of that phrase, OR the word "family" within the same sentence as the root word, "unhous" or any variant, within five words of child/children and within the same paragraph as school/schools/schooling.

Below are a couple of links to databases mentioned to get you started. Please click the link to the Research Guide on Finding Journal Articles for the rest of the important databases you need for your law journal research.

In the tabbed-out collections of guidance for searching resources here, we provide general strategies below and also specific step-by-step instructions in the other tabs for searching databases you will commonly need to research. If you have further questions, including questions about internet resources or databases we didn't cover, please contact the UNM Law Library reference desk at lawlibrary.unm.edu for assistance. 

General boolean search tips for databases and websites

1. Identify key concepts:

Housing law protections 

Domestic violence 

2. Find Synonyms (alternative keywords, sometimes narrow or broader):

domestic violence, dating violence, intimate partner violence

housing, evict, terminate

2.5.  If you want to exclude terms: 

("domestic violence" OR "dating violence" OR "intimate partner violence") BUT NOT stalk!

The above search string excludes the root, stalk as well as stalking, stalker, etc. 

3. Use Truncation (putting * at the end of a word stem, broadens search):

hous!  evict!  terminat!

hous*  evict*  terminat*

4. using boolean search strategies and nesting: nest similar terms and join them with proximity connectors:

(hous! or evict! OR terminat!) /p protect! /p ("domestic violence" OR "dating violence" OR "intimate partner violence" OR stalk!)

You are telling the database to search for alternative root terms: hous- OR evict- OR terminat- any of which must occur within the same paragraph as the root, protect-, within the same paragraph as any of the following exact phrases "domestic violence" OR "dating violence" OR "intimate partner violence" OR the root term, stalk-

Tips:

AND (joins concepts and narrows the search)
OR (using related terms, broadens the search)

("domestic violence" OR "intimate partner violence")

"...." (quotes for phrase searching)

"domestic violence"