Understanding Citator Signals
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
How can a case become "bad" law?
Cases can become invalidated, or "bad" law, in the following ways:
- Reversed on appeal in the same litigation
- Overruled in different, subsequent litigation
- Superseded by statute or administrative regulation
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!
CALI Lessons
For additional practice with citators, check out the following CALI Lessons:
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What are citators?
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.
Online legal citators are research tools that help track how legal authorities have been used and interpreted. They list both primary and secondary sources that cite to a particular law or case, allowing researchers to see how it has been applied. Citators also indicate whether other authorities agree with, criticize, or overrule the cited authority, making it easier to evaluate its strength. In addition, they provide valuable information about the current status of a law and outline the procedural history of cases. Finally, citators serve as a gateway to further research by directing users to additional, related resources.
Why use citators?
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.
How do you use citators efficiently?
Using filters and Boolean search strategies together can greatly improve the efficiency and precision of legal research. Filters such as jurisdiction, court level, keywords, and headnotes help narrow results to the most relevant cases, while Boolean tools allow researchers to control how search terms interact and appear in proximity to one another. When used in combination, these strategies save time, reduce irrelevant results, and ensure that legal researchers locate the most authoritative and useful sources for their issue.
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