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Introduction to Legal Research

This guide is an introduction to legal research at the University of Melbourne. This guide is intended for law students in the JD, MLM , Breadth programs who are new to legal research. Students in other disciplines who may need to conduct legal research

Finding Commentary Using Case Citators

CaseBase (Lexis Advance Pacific), FirstPoint (Westlaw AU), and LawCite provide journal article citations to cases. LawCite provides law reform commission report citations to cases.

CaseBase (Lexis Advance) 

Search for your case in CaseBase and from the CaseBase record click on the link 'Publications referring to this case': 

FirstPoint (Westlaw AU)

Search for your case in FirstPoint and from the FirstPoint record click on the link 'Noted in Journals': 

LawCite (AustLII)

Search for your case in LawCite and from the results go to the sections titled 'Law Reform Reports Referring to this Case' or 'Law Journal Articles Referring to this Case':

Finding Commentary Using Other Sources

To find commentary for cases, search for the name or citation of your case in a commentary or journal article database. Commentary and journal article databases are listed on the Law Library website Research Databases by Type page 

The Informit platform, which includes AGIS Plus Text, has a field dedicated to searching for cases: