Each legal research database has its own list of citator signals, although they all are pretty similar in form and meaning. Below are resources to understand citator signals
Cases can become invalidated, or "bad" law, in the following ways:
Pay attention to KeyCite's "Overruling Risk" and any pending legislation. You always want to confirm that the cases you are citing are still good law!
For additional practice with citators, check out the following CALI Lessons:
Citators are legal research tools that provide information about the history and treatment of legal authorities. The two main citators you will use during your first year of law school are Shepard's (Lexis) and KeyCite (Westlaw). Another popular citator is BCite (Bloomberg), but that is not covered in the first-year curriculum.
Researchers use citators to:
Locate relevant legal authorities. Citators are a great finding tool that allow you to branch out and find related primary and secondary authorities addressing specific legal issues.
Validate legal authorities. Citators include various symbols (yellow triangles, red flags, etc.) with specific meanings attached to them (pending legislation, declared unconstitutional, etc.). Researchers use these signals to determine whether the law relied upon is still good law.
Understand the persuasive value of cases. Citators examine the treatment history of cases, including factors such as how often the case has been cited and whether it has received positive or negative treatment by the courts. These factors help researchers determine how persuasive, or valuable, a case is.
)